


All We Said We'd Never Be

by always_a_birthday_girl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Drama, Canon-Typical Violence, Dean Winchester's Terrible Life, Emotional Constipation, I mean it's the Winchesters what did you expect, M/M, Romance, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 22:13:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_a_birthday_girl/pseuds/always_a_birthday_girl
Summary: This would all be so much easier if Cas didn't look at him like that.Months after making his peace with dying, Dean finds himself forced to live in this world of angels and apocalypses, and Sammy running away to be with a sadistic demigod, and nothing much making sense except the conversations he has with Cas while no one's looking.





	1. we're going down

It was a relief when the hell hound started baying.

Dean had signed up for one last year of the good stuff—beer, Sammy, the Impala, hunting, waitresses with the top button of their shirt undone, Zeppelin and Seger and the freedom of pushing eighty on the speedometer just because he could. He'd signed up for one more year of peace and happiness, the kind of life he'd never actually had. His mistake.

Because what he'd actually gotten was a year of that pinched line between Sam's eyebrows and his brother's hushed voice on the phone with Bobby whenever he thought Dean was asleep. He'd gotten a year of wild goose chases, desperate gambits, and a neverending argument with his brother that bled from one vamp hunt to another diner breakfast to a cycle of Tuesdays in southern Florida and refused to meet a definite conclusion because Dean was an immovable object and Sam—when he put his mind to it—was an unstoppable force.

Time had stretched like taffy as his death date grew closer, and the impact of all those shitty little moments when Sam was pissed or hurt or disappointed was twice as deep. Dean had failed to count on the fact that the life he'd bargained away to save his brother's soul was a shitty life to begin with.

It was beyond wrong to be grateful it was time to die, but Dean had spent the better part of twenty years not apologizing for how he felt and he wasn't about to start now.

He would have rather faced it alone, a drink in one hand and his gun in the other—both useless gestures, but oh so important. Dying with dignity, not pinned down by a psychotic demon and torn to shreds in front of his little brother's eyes.

He definitely could have done without the last part.

Sam's screaming wove in between the hell hound's barks. Poor kid never gave up trying to find a way out, right down to the last second. And Dean blaming him for that would be the pot calling the kettle black, but he did wish his baby brother had managed to come to terms with it. He didn't want reality thrown in Sam's face like a bucket of boiling water, scalding him with the kind of truth no one wanted to see.

It couldn't be helped now. Too late for a miracle, too late for options, too late for anything but surrender.

And Dean . . . well, Dean could make his peace with that. He'd spent his whole life fighting, sacrificing, putting Dad first, and Sam, and the hunt, everything but himself. And it was okay, but stopping was okay, too. He could do with shrugging off the responsibility of Sam's entire grown-ass life, even if he had to side-step into Hell to do it.

He was well aware how fucked it was, that the only way he could let Sammy live was to let himself die, but the days of agonizing over whether or not he'd made the right choice were. He'd made the last choice he'd ever make, and he didn't have the luxury or obligation to care if it was the right one.

The hell hound's claws seared like fire, and burned like ice, and the pain began with teeth and nails mangling his legs and worked its way up from there. He screamed when it clamped its jaws around his hip and tore a chunk of flesh inches from the sensitive skin of his abdomen—but hell, all skin was sensitive when it was being shredded by a blunt object.

The hound's teeth sunk below flesh and crunched through bone and closed around his quivering, horrified soul. And that pain wasn't physical pain, it was the ache of every heartbreak and disappointment and fear and sadness, all the negative feelings he usually chased to the bottom of a shot glass, amplified to a hundred and fifty. He'd never _felt_ like this before. He'd never allowed himself.

He was flayed raw.

The last thing he saw was Sam's face. He was grateful for that. He tried to make his mouth work, to tell his brother that everything was going to be fine (one last lie for the books, couldn't hurt him now), but—as abruptly as being pulled underwater—he was sucked out of his body, and down to the blackness.

The actual death was a blink. He went, and then he was no longer.

The hound's thick incisors still had a grip on his soul, but it was as disembodied as a dream. He was aware of things happening in places not here. Sam grieving, Bobby swearing, Sam laughing, the hum of the Impala's engine.

He heard Mom tucking Sammy into his crib, and Dad grumbling about tuna salad, and Ellen wishing her husband good luck on a hunt. He heard the depth and breadth of his own life, and it was over before he knew it.

He kept going down and down and down. He was without the hell hound now, and without eyes or ears or anything except the sensation of falling.

Was this it? Hell?

The thought came and went with no concept of time attached, and maybe it took him hours to come to the question or maybe it took minutes. He thought he might be afraid, but the emotion was as detached as his missing body. It hadn't sunk in, yet, which suggested it had only been minutes.

As if minutes mattered when he was staring down the barrel of eternity and time was only relative to the earth and the people on it. Dean hadn't realized he had a philosopher in him but there it was, presenting itself only now that it was useless as fuck.

He didn't feel himself land. He didn't sense any immediate change in his state or environment, and the landscape he was plunged in still felt more like a dream than anything else, but by the by he wasn't falling or remembering or detached from fear. The shift either occurred so quickly that he didn't recognize it, or so slowly that he didn't notice.

Perhaps he was beginning to lose self-awareness.

However it happened, he found himself in Hell. And  _then_ it hurt.

It hurt for a long time.

On and on and on and on it went. The idea of "eternity" had been a vague concept before he fell. He hadn't properly understood what he was signing up for.

It was every cafeteria line and drawn-out battle, every blood-splattered moment where he wished for nothing but a shower, every mind-bogglingly boring stakeout. It was torture, and pain, and waiting, and the worst part was that he was waiting for nothing. It would never be over.

There was no breaking point, no death, no release, just the take and the keep-on-taking, and if that routine had been exhausting on earth, well, it was damn intolerable down here. And he had to tolerate it, because that was all there was.

The details barely registered with him. Giving him eyes, real, physical eyes, only to gouge them out with tongs; slashing his wrists to watch him bleed (how do you bleed in Hell? He didn't know, didn't care, didn't think to ask the sadistic fuck who laughed every time he groaned); pulling him apart by the chains he was suspended from; more pain, artful pain, creative pain, but always at its heart, simply pain. How it came didn't matter as much as the fact that it kept coming, and never stopped, and never would stop. Ever.

This was  _normal_ now. But his mind just wouldn't get with the program. It was still confined to the idea that waiting meant the wait would eventually be over, that pain meant the wound was healing, that all the wrongs of this picture would be made right. It was a human notion. A foolish one. And that hope—persistent and idiotic in equal measure—was what made it torture.

It was unbearable.

_He had to bear it._

It was intolerable.

_He had to tolerate it._

It was beyond the limit of what he could stand.

_And yet he survived it._

In the real world, the physical world, he would have given Hell what it wanted. He would have turned over the command codes or state secrets or Sammy's location or whatever it was they were torturing him for. He would have become a drooling, incomprehensible mess. In the real world, his body would have reached its limits and shut down, refusing to take in any more stimuli. In the real world, there was always an out.

There wasn't an out down here.

It was a century before the one who called himself Alastair stepped out of the red shadows and dangling hooks and grinned down at Dean with bared fangs and told him this had been one day.

_One_ .

"They're burning your body upstairs." Alastair smiled, like he was all proud of himself for reporting the day's events. "Sammy's crying and pretending he isn't. Later, he's going to run to that demon girl for comfort. Nothing like a good grief-fuck. And you, meanwhile . . . are here."

He ran a finger—Dean thought it was a finger, anyway, it was thin and clawed and covered in wrinkled skinlike nothingness _—_ down Dean's cheek. Then he turned it in, digging all the way through the skin and muscle until Dean howled and was tasting the blood under Alastair's claw through the second mouth the demon had just punctured.

"I can take you off the rack." Alastair hooked his finger, pulling Dean's cheek away from his teeth. "As long as you stand here, doing what I do."

Dean couldn't tell him to go to Hell or anything noble like that, but he squeezed his nonexistent eyes shut and mumbled, around the iron and dirt and powdered sugar chalk of demon's skin, that Alastair could go fuck himself. His whole body—or whatever the thing was that was strung up like a butchered animal—was shaking. He was in cold sweats.

Alastair just laughed.

It felt like years before he came back, and he took great pleasure in slicing open the tender flesh of Dean's balls and ripping out his stones, and Dean wasn't sure if he was crying or bleeding or both but it was beyond anything he could possibly have imagined topside and he wanted to die but still he said no.

It was stupid to think he still had honor or principles down here, but that was Dean. Stupid. And he clung to that stupidity like an anchor, because the only thing worse than this would be becoming a demon that Sam would have to hunt.

That was what he'd become, if he let go. A demon.

And he would suffer to the end of the world and back, but he wouldn't put this on Sam. Sammy wasn't allowed any part of Dean's punishment. He was living his life up there, and that was still worth fighting for. That was the whole reason Dean was fighting to begin with.

He lost track of how many times he said no. He tried to number them at first because it gave him something to hold on to that didn't hurt, that had meaning but wasn't Sammy or Bobby or any of the other things and people he'd left behind. But somewhere along the way, it got too hard.

"I'll tell you a secret," Alastair said, some time after Dean stopped counting his refusals and started hanging on by the tips of his fingernails. "You haven't saved anyone or anything, boy." He tapped his mangled hand down Dean's chest, hovering over the spot where Dean's heart used to be. Still was, in all the ways that counted. "All humans go to hell when they die. That's why there are so many demons."

Alastair was lying, Dean told himself firmly.

But after the demon left; after another hundred days with his parched mouth and sluggishly clotting blood and new dozen ways to inflict pain on his battered body, he wasn't so firm. He wasn't so  _sure_ .

He was barely sure the real world existed any more. Maybe it had all come to an end, and this was what was left.

And then he saw Sam.

There were thousands in the pit with him. He was aware of their presence, even if he couldn't see them and had long since given up communicating with them. They were all wrapped up in their personal hells.

But Sam's voice was the most familiar thing in Dean's world, even now, and there was no mistaking the pitch and timbre of his scream. It tore through Dean, a new kind of agony.

"Sam?" His tongue was sandpaper-rough and dry as, well, hell. It hurt to scream, but everything hurt so he barely noticed. "Sammy?  _SAM!_ "

_"Dean!"_

Dean fought against his restraints, pulling at the metal threaded deep below his borrowed skin, ignoring the lances that stabbed out and skewered him, he had to see Sam with his own approximation of eyes, Sam being here would lend a reality he wasn't ready to grant to this nightmare--

And he only caught a flash, but he saw.

The image of Sam was torn from him so fast, he could almost believe it was a mistake. That he wasn't supposed to know his brother was here, and some demon had whisked the sight away in the hopes of correcting the error before anyone noticed. He could almost think it wasn't just another way for Alastair to torment him, which was ironic because Sam being here was the worst torture Dean could imagine.

Maybe, he thought. Maybe Alistair was right. Maybe there was nothing but Hell.

He cracked.

* * *

Sam's dreams had once involved houses and nice girls and possibly big, shaggy dogs that he could take on jogs with him.

Now they began and ended with the yapping of imaginary hell hounds, and Dean's shrieks.

Ruby assured him the dreams would stop once he got stronger, which didn't make him feel better because when she said "stronger", he knew she meant "more demonic". No matter how clever they both were with their words, they knew what was going on here.

But Ruby wanted it and Sam didn't care, so. Whatever.

He still missed Jess. Their relationship hadn't been perfect, but she'd been as close as Sam ever got to happy.

He'd liked the juvenile parties, the long nights studying, the mornings-after with coffee and eggs and turkey sausage. He'd liked being normal with her and it made losing her twice as hard.

And Sam would never fully shake the wrongness of her death (or the knowledge that it was his fault), but on a good day he could admit he missed her without wanting to jump off a cliff in misery directly after.

But all of that was a drop in the ocean compared to the ragged, raw, festering, oozing, unnatural edge of his soul where Dean's had been ripped away.

He missed Jess, but he was  _spiraling_ without Dean, even with Ruby to hold on to like a leaky life preserver. She graciously didn't judge him for the issues he piled on her plate like second helpings—the barely-suppressed Oedipal complex, the deep-seated rage toward his father, and the worst, the thing he could not properly name, the way he was tied to Dean on a far deeper level than was normal for anyone, even anyones who'd been through what they had.

Dean was the other half of Sam's functioning whole, and he sounded like a crazy person when he tried to explain it so he'd long since stopped trying. The only one around to listen was a demon, anyway, and she didn't give a fuck. That was the best part of Ruby, really. The way she didn't care.

"I care about  _you._ " She'd been affronted when he made the mistake of saying it aloud. He'd meant it as a compliment, but of course she hadn't taken it that way. She was human in the oddest ways. "I just care so much about you that the shitload of psychological problems aren't a deal-breaker for me."

"You're lying." He'd smiled anyway, and she'd grinned and hadn't bothered to deny it, and it was understood that the truth fell somewhere between her point of view and his, but it didn't matter because they stayed on the same page regardless. Even if they were reading different lines.

Ruby drew the line at drinking himself to death, fucking random women (or men) (it was  _dark_ , okay?), and driving longer than five hours at a time. She told him to call Bobby when it got real bad, beyond-her-ability bad, and she shoved him in the shower every few days or so, even if sometimes she had to lure him in with her.

And it was, possibly, the most open and healthy relationship he'd had while not lying his face off about who he was.

Even half-high on demon blood most of the time, Sam knew that was fucked.

_He_ was fucked, because he was missing half his damn soul and nobody could function like that. He read every piece of Underworld, Netherworld, and afterlife lore he could get his hands on. He woke up dying to call Ruby for a hit, or a booty call, though the difference between the two was rapidly disintegrating, and sometimes he'd follow through with it but most nights he'd reach for the lore instead. He trusted himself with this part—with the research and the books and the searching for a way to get Dean out of Hell. He didn't trust himself with the demon.

Some days he lost the battle with himself and went running after Ruby, hiding behind her blood and her body and her wit from the nightmares, and some days he won and got the grand prize of hiding from  _Ruby_ behind the guilt and the research, and that was Sam's life now. Ping-ponging between a rock and a hard place. 

One day, he just. He had to go. He opened his eyes and couldn't take it for another moment. He had to go _back._

He left the Impala in Ruby's hands, perversely hoping Dean would rise up from the grave to haunt his ass for such a heinous crime, and took her VW Bug all the way down to Florida. He'd been hovering around Kansas, haunting their old routes and circling the spot where Dean had been buried with the careful wariness of a dog waiting to see if its opponent would strike, but he needed out. He needed to see somewhere that wasn't flat and depressing, and he had a half-baked idea that was dying to scald his fingers when he took it out of the oven.

The Bug had better gas mileage, but he drew quite a few looks that suggested he looked like a circus act as he climbed out of it. Dean would have thought that was hilarious. He'd never completely forgiven Sam for those five inches between them.

Sam kept remembering things like that. The petty things, the dumb things, the everyday minutes he'd given up to go to Stanford, and he didn't regret college, exactly, but it seemed like it was pretty damn pointless when he'd just ended up hunting anyway. All the things he'd sacrificed to leave had ended up being sacrifices for nothing.

He had this childish notion that he could reverse it. That if he just figured out the right place to stand and the right words to say, he could jump back into that loop of endless Tuesdays and figure out the right Wednesday to jump off on, the one that would lead to a future where Dean escaped Hell and Sam wouldn't have to live it on earth every day.

So he found himself in Broward County, home of desperados and dying dreams.

He still had flashbacks to this particular town, to all the horrible ways he'd watched his brother go, though it wasn't as bad as it used to be now that he knew what it was like for real.

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he walked, the Impala's keys pressed against his palm. He was out of place here, dressed like a Kansas boy when Kansas boys weren't known to leave Kansas, unless they were blown to Oz—but that was a whole other book.

In Sam's book, he and Dad and Dean drifted across the Midwest like seed grass, taking pieces of home with them until it wasn't so much taking the boys out of Kansas as taking Kansas with them, or what Sam understood to be Kansas. Truth was, he remembered as much about their last home as he did Mom: nothing. Outsiders wouldn't notice the difference, but Sam wasn't a Kansas boy. He was just good at imitating one.

He'd spent his life copying the way Dean walked, talked, picked out girls; the way he held his gun or tucked it in the back of his jeans ( _Like an idjit_ , Bobby grumbled in the back of his memory.  _Lookin' to blow off your own ass cheek._ ) or tossed it in the trunk of the Impala after a hunt. The only thing Sam did that Dean hadn't done first was go to college, and see how well that had worked out.

The sandwich-board sign in front of the entrance to the Mystery Spot had a new coat of paint. Everything else, from the tacky fliers nailed to every telephone pole to the canned, imitation hurdy-gurdy music cranking from the obvious box speakers on either side of the door, was the same.

It cheerfully informed Sam that it was Wednesday.

He almost went in, though he knew what had happened here had nothing to do with the Mystery Spot and everything to do with the shady hurdy-gurdy demigod who'd been breezing through.

Jess's death had been horrific. Sometimes he still saw her, suspended from the ceiling, when he closed his eyes. It wasn't the kind of image that would ever stop haunting him. And losing Dad had been a different kind of terrible, laced with the pain of what-if and why-not.

But Dean. Dean had been a perfect marriage of the two; the horror of seeing a loved one torn apart in front of his eyes, and the tragedy of wondering what might have happened if he'd never ruined the picture.

Sam's ass was at a bar before he could think much further than that. He'd learned in college that using alcohol to cope with life's problems was classified as  _unhealthy behavior_ in the world of the normal people, and he'd nearly busted out laughing when he realized each and every hunter he knew fell squarely into the category of  _high-functioning alcoholic_ . 

Normal people didn't face flesh-eating ghouls and black-eyed demons. Normal people weren't forced to compete in sadistic survival-of-the-fittest games with highly specific and deadly superpowers. Normal people had the luxury of worrying about the state of their liver in ten, twenty years.

Sam figured at this rate he'd make five. Six, if Ruby stayed in the picture, though his money was on her bailing within the next month. His self-absorbed, brother-loving ass was even getting on  _his_ nerves. Normal people didn't know shit about  _high-functioning._

He tried to be good. He didn't want every second of the day to be about him and what he was going through, but the more he tamped down the feeling of slowly going crazy, the crazier he felt. He was road-tripping with a demon, on a quest to rescue his two-month-dead brother from Hell and kill the demon who'd sent Dean there. He knew better, but ( _shocker_ ) that wasn't enough to stop him.

None of this would mean jack if Sam wasted his life. He was almost okay with swallowing the cost of going to Stanford, but he wouldn't insult the sacrifice Dean had made in the same way. He'd do what it took to kill Lilith and bring Dean back, not necessarily in that order.

He ordered a drink with a name that would have made him blush six months ago, and now just inspired him to give the bartender a crooked smile and a tired shrug. Dean could have turned it into a flirt, but that was Dean. Sam had enough problems to be getting on with already. The bartender rolled her eyes and started mixing his drink.

"I'll have what he's having, please." Someone slid into Sam's personal space. A man someone, by the voice. "And put both on my tab."

"We don't have tabs." The bartender looked like she might roll her eyes again.

"Sorry," Sam said automatically, turning to face the man, "but it'll take more than one Sex With An Alligator for you to get a turn."

And then.

Shit.

"You ordered a drink called  _Sex With An Alligator_ ?" The Trickster's hazel eyes glimmered. The bastard could at least  _try_ to contain his obvious glee. "Why, Samminator, I didn't know you had it in you."

"You!" In hindsight, the exclamation probably wasn't the most intelligent response he could have made. And at some point in his life, Sam  _had _ been intelligent. But now, he sprang off his stool and lunged for the demigod's throat, because trying to kill creatures above his paygrade was kind of Sam's thing these days. 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." The Trickster stumbled off his own stool and crashed into a table in his effort to get away from Sam Winchester, Attacking Behemoth. It was that sole, nearly-human moment that stopped Sam from whipping out his knife, and probably saved them both from an evening in the local jail.

Not that any podunk cell would hold the frigging Trickster.

For Sam there were monsters, and then there were  _monsters_ . There were the cases he and Dean shrugged off, the ones they'd reminisce about over a six-pack of beer while they watched the sunset over a national monument neither of them gave a fuck about (although Dean never would shut up about wanting to see the Grand Canyon), and then there were the ones they agreed to never speak of again. 

The ones that made Dean growl in his sleep. The ones that kept Sam from  _getting_ any sleep.

The Trickster's case had been one of those. And even though Sam had come here with the express intent to find a creature he'd been sure was no longer hanging around Florida, he was still quivering at the sight of the demigod.

It could have been his fault. He could have been the one who wasted the one extra day Sam needed to figure shit out. It would be so easy to blame the Trickster for all of this, for hurting Dean instead of helping. Sam could _make_ it his fault.

The Trickster had both hands in the air, like he was surrendering. The bartender had one hand on the telephone.

Sam backed up, slowly. There was still a glimmer of intelligence under his grief. All the demigod had done was hold up a mirror and show an uncannily accurate future.

"He's good." Sam slid back onto the barstool, glancing at the bartender. She was still poised to call for help. "We're good. Really." He paused, took in the Trickster's loose-fitting button-up shirt and tight-fitting jeans, and added, "I'm gonna need that drink ASAP, though."

The Trickster grinned. "I am so--"

Sam held up a finger. "Wait."

To his immense surprise, the being did as he asked—which was definitely a first when it came to asking favors of paranormal forces—and didn't say a word while Sam received his drink, found the bottom of his drink, and pushed it back across the bar in a silent plea for more.

It was only when the second green-tinged shot was in his hand that he said, "Okay. Now talk."

"So aggro." The Trickster eased back onto the stool beside Sam's. "Having a rough year?"

Sam glared at him.

"Don't be like that." The demigod twirled his fingers, smirking. "You came here to meet me, after all. The least you could do is remember your manners."

"Trust me," Sam said. "It's taking everything I have to not push you against that wall."

The Trickster raised one eyebrow suggestively.

Sam tipped back his second drink. "Not what I meant."  
"Oh, I know, Sammykins. You're getting your rocks off with Ruby nowadays, I hear." The demigod lifted his own glass to his lips, smiled, and added against the rim, "Though clearly she doesn't have you on too tight a leash, if you're here."

"I'm not—Ruby and I—" Sam stumbled over the words, maybe because he was starting to feel punchy in his midriff or maybe because the stupid pagan god had a way of skewering him with a look that (almost) made him feel obligated to defend his actions. "I'm allowed to fuck other people, okay?"

And . . . no, dammit. That came out fifty shades of wrong and made the Trickster snort, like he pitied poor Sam Winchester's demon-whipped ass.

What Sam meant was, he and Ruby weren't in a relationship. He didn't belong to her, they weren't obligated to each other, and it didn't matter if they fucked every now and again . . . and again and again. It didn't mean he'd sold his soul or anything like that, it didn't make him  _evil_ . Maybe he was butting up against the line of villainy, and he'd crossed the line of morality about twenty miles back, but it wasn't the Trickster's place to judge.

But Sam's third Sex With An Alligator was in his fist, and the ability to speak in well-formed, coherent sentences was almost behind him.

The Trickster tipped his head back, slowly, exposing his throat as he drank. His Adam's apple bobbed with the swallow.

Sam looked away.

"So." The demigod wiped his mouth on one of the ridiculously small paper napkins from the bar. "Dean's dead."

Sam winced.

"Yeah, it's sad." The Trickster breezed by the single most traumatic event in Sam's life with a quirk of his lip and an eye roll. "But that's life. Er, death. I hope you aren't thinking of trying to bring him  _back_ ."

He put a slight, condescending emphasis on the last word, fixing his amber gaze on Sam again. "Because that would be foolish. It would piss me off, Sam, and you haven't seen me truly pissed off. Not yet, anyway."

Sam pushed his glass away, shaking his head when the bartender went to fix another. He had to be tipsy to hold this conversation in the first place, but he didn't want to get flat-out hammered—that was no way to win.

Not that he had a chance to begin with.

"Why the fuck do you care so much?" Again. Not the direction he should have been heading in. He folded his arms on the bartop, leaning on them as the woozy feeling in his stomach began to spread to the rest of his body.

The Trickster raised both eyebrows this time, as if he couldn't believe Sam had the audacity to ask.

"I mean," the punchy feeling hit Sam's head, and he breathed deep to fight the sudden surge of light-headedness, "I get that the first time, with the case. It was an accident. You didn't mean for us to catch you."

"Didn't I?"

"But after, but here," Sam said, ignoring that because it was either the god trying to fuck with Sam's head (which was already feeling pretty fucked), or something too big and too complicated to think about with a . . . well, with an already-fucked head. "In the Mystery Spot. Why bother?"

The Trickster cradled his chin in his hand, leaning his elbow on one knee like he found nothing in the world so fascinating as Sam rambling about his problems, and winked. "I'm a lover of justice, Sammy. Of the natural order. And you two boys were hell-bent on screwing it up."

No one had called Sam "Sammy" in two months straight, so of course that was the part his brain fixed on. Then he processed the rest of the sentence, albeit more slowly than usual. "We didn't screw up the—we weren't—it was just another demon deal. Just a stupid deal, nothing special about us."

"That's where you're wrong. You're twenty-fucking-thousand degrees of special." The Trickster didn't make it sound like a good thing. He wiggled his nose, and Sam half-expected to hear a distorted bell ring, like in  _Bewitched_ . Dean had had such a hard-on for Samantha when he was fourteen.

"You're a human with the blood of a demon. Your father was on Hell's Most Wanted list. Your older brother . . . " He faltered, and maybe it was Sam's muzzy perception of the world, but he looked like he was biting his tongue. "Dean's special."

The present tense . . . Sam wasn't anywhere close to drunk enough to be making that up.

"Is," he pointed out.

"Slip of the tongue."

"You don't have those."

The Trickster winked again. "I do if you make it worth my while."

"This conversation is going nowhere." Sam leaned more heavily on the bar, body folding over the smooth top. "I don't even know why I came."

"You wanted out." The Trickster edged closer to him. "You're an escapist, kiddo, I know the type."

Sam rested his head in his hands. He was being analyzed by a former foe. He might as well throw on a pair of tights and start calling himself Demonblood Boy. Or something catchier, that he didn't come up with while buzzed.

"Hypothetically," he said, before the Trickster could vanish or order another drink or maybe take the way he was raking his eyes over Sam's body to the next level, "could you bring me back to Tuesday?"

"Yesterday?"

"No. The other Tuesday." Sam felt safe in the knowledge that only one other person on earth would know what Tuesday he meant and that person was currently finishing up a drink next to him.

The Trickster set his glass down and stood up. Sam didn't see exactly how it happened, but in a flash there was money on the counter and both their glasses were empty. The demigod offered his hand to Sam.

No one had held his hand since Jess, and no one had led him by it since he was a child. For all that Dean frowned on excessive displays of physical affection (and anything more than a shoulder clap was excessive, in his opinion), he'd kept a firm grip on Sam's hand or wrist until Sam was old enough to con his own money and find his way back if they got separated.

It was kind of nostalgic, in its own way.

So Sam obliged. It was a Florida tourist trap in the middle of the afternoon—no one batted an eye as two grown men walked out hand in hand.

Outside wasn't the outside that Sam remembered. The bell dinging over his head as they exited took backstage to the sudden explosion of noise in the street beyond. It was--

"Is this Paris?" The gray sky and narrow streets looked cinematic, European.

"Don't be cliche." The Trickster rolled his eyes. "It's Montreal. Same architecture, less berets and angsty artists."

"Did you just tell me not to be cliche while boiling Paris down to three cliches?" Sam asked, and the Trickster squeezed his hand, a grin spreading over his face.

"I'm a riddle wrapped in an enigma, Samination. Come on." He pulled Sam down the street, and Sam—too flustered to do anything but obey—followed. This wasn't what he'd asked for, but since when was that a surprise?

He should have been panicking, processing the myriad of ways this could bite him in the ass, but he was still warm and sloshy and pliant. The idea that this was a trap didn't really upset him. And he just sort of _felt_ like the demigod didn't mean any harm this time.

The Trickster's hand was comforting and Sam didn't mind walking behind him. It was about time someone took control of his life.

The arching, stone buildings of Montreal really did resemble Paris streets. Sam had never been, but he'd looked at pictures. He and Jess had planned on taking advantage of the program that allowed them to study abroad; it was supposed to be their grand senior trip, pushed back by money constraints on his part and time constraints on hers. Then she'd never finished her internship, and Sam had been forced back on the road with Dean and pool-hustling and the idea of finishing school, let alone going to another country to do it, had been ridiculous.

The sidewalk was slick cobblestone, and more than once he had to watch his feet to keep from stumbling or slipping. The Trickster navigated through the crowds like they weren't there, but Sam was considerably larger and more likely to bump into unsuspecting tourists.

And then the demigod pulled a sharp right, and they were passing through an iron gate. Long, wet grass soaked the hems of Sam's jeans, and he almost tripped again; this time, over a hunk of stone embedded in the earth.

He cast a quick glance around.

"Is this a graveyard?"

"And that's why you're the smart one." The Trickster _tsk_ed. "Yes, Sam-I-Am, this is a graveyard. It's where they bury dead people."

"Why did you drag me to a Canadian graveyard?" Sam was too nonplussed to bristle at the mockery. His hand was still in the Trickster's even though they'd stopped walking, but he couldn't think of a reason to let go. Not when the demigod was still holding on so tightly, his palm the only warm spot on the chilly, drizzly day.

"Over here." The Trickster jerked his chin toward a spot further away. The graveyard was in a strange place, in the middle of the city; squashed between a graystone law firm and a brownstone cafe, with four equally-out-of-place oak trees growing in each corner, providing some privacy from the traffic around it.

He pulled Sam to the base of one of the trees, where a stone headmarker was placed, neatly between two roots.

"Oh, God," Sam said, the penny dropping, "Is this the part where you tell me some gut-wrenching story about the person buried here in the hopes that it will, I don't know, drive home some valuable lesson? I hate those episodes."

"Again. Cliche." The Trickster wrinkled his nose. "I mean, I  _am_ going to try and drill a lesson through your thick skull, but it's you. I doubt it'll do any good. But no, Sam, I don't have a great and tragic story attached to this grave stone."

He looked down at it, then back up at Sam. "Honestly? No tricks, no flair, no bullshit? I just like it here."

Sam kind of boggled at him.

"What?" His companion went on the defensive, face tightening, body tensing. "I'm—well, I'm not human, but I'm close enough. I have things I like and things I don't like. Cut me, I bleed. Et cetera."

"You don't bleed." Sam didn't like the stiffness. He wanted to go back to the fluid, thoughtless walk.

The Trickster shrugged. "That  _you've_ seen." He toed the grave, but gently. Reverently. "You know how many people have died throughout history?" He didn't give Sam an opportunity to respond. "All of them. Some get glorified in history books and TV movies. Some are remembered by their families and friends, given headstones in graveyards that stand to this day. And some, like this poor bastard?" 

He let go of Sam's hand to crouch next to the stone, and touch it instead.

Sam's hand felt cold. He put it in his pocket.

"They get nothing." The Trickster hunched his shoulders. Sam's eyes followed the curve before he caught himself. "No one remembers them. Maybe no one ever mourned." He ran a finger down its length. "Some people would call that sad, but you know what, Sam? Not everyone can be rock stars. You get your life, you live it, you die. And what happens afterward? It doesn't matter."

Sam crouched next to him, uneasy. "Dean matters to me. Even after death."

The Trickster looked over at him. "You care too much. That's the lesson. That's always been the lesson."

It stung, but it wasn't like it was a lie. It definitely wasn't the first time Sam had heard it. He picked at the grass around the grave. "It's the only way I know how."

The god looked at him for a long, quiet moment. His eyes were darker without the Florida sun, even Florida sun diluted by greasy bar windows. "I would give every story in the world to be remembered in yours."

It was so sincere, and so solemn, it took Sam aback. He didn't know what to say, so he stared at the headstone in silence, his cheeks flaming. He had the distinct impression he'd been paid a compliment that was impossible to match in words, by the last being on earth that wanted to give it to him.

And it was still the fucking Trickster he was talking to, so there was always the possibility it was bullshit.

"You aren't going to give me Dean back, are you?" he finally asked, after eons had passed between them in just a few breaths. "Not even for a day?"

"Do you really want Dean to see you like this?"

Sam pulled his hands out of his pockets to stare at them. He didn't bother to answer the question.

The shame made him feel sick. Or maybe it was the multiple Sex With An Alligators coming back to haunt him. Either way, the warm and fuzzy feeling was evaporating, replaced with a cold, clammy nausea that he didn't know how to fix.

"I keep thinking, it doesn't matter if I do something so bad, I get sent to Hell." His stomach twisted. He'd have never confessed as much to Dean, to Bobby. To anyone whose love he was afraid of losing. "Because at least then, I'll be with him. With my brother."

The Trickster put his hand over Sam's, and Sam didn't need his acceptance or his understanding or anything, but the demigod's expression suggested Sam had both. And that made him feel . . . better. They didn't say another word that afternoon. Just sat, and watched the rain and the people walking by and the people long-dead, sleeping in their tombs.


	2. recalled to life

Dean had all but forgotten who he was when the flash-bang-crash came; cracks of thunder and lightning in a place that never rained. He was scalpel-deep in a soul, its constructed flesh in pieces around him, his hands and arms and every other part slick with blood and gritty with smog.

The ground-that-was-not-ground shook, and Dean felt the world shake to pieces with it. It rumbled, and his hand shook, the scalpel nudging at the sides of the open wound and unintentionally making the soul howl.

Out of habit, Dean snapped, "Did I say you could talk?"  
The soul writhed.

And Dean--

Dean stared at the sky and the lightening and he was afraid because it reminded him of watching storms out the back window of the Impala with Sam, and the _Impala_ and _Sam_ were things that existed, and if they were things that existed . . .

_No_, he told himself. There was no Sam, no Impala, nothing but Hell. What used to be didn't matter; it had passed on the rear end of forever and this was all there was now. Surviving was all that mattered, not because survival mattered but because dying wasn't an option. There was nothing else.

Lightning shredded the horizon again, bringing a cacophony of screams with it. Screams weren't uncommon, down here, but these were different—sharper, more rage than pain. Demons keening.

Dean dropped the scalpel, not caring that it clattered against the soul's bone and stayed there as the flesh healed over it. He hadn't moved from this spot for so long, he nearly couldn't remember how. When the muscle memory did kick in, he felt like the Tin Man, rusty at the joints and metal plates everywhere else.

He took one step away from his rack, then two. Steps _toward_ the lightning. Demons were in pain. Demons, like him, maybe . . . maybe dying. Maybe someone, somewhere, had finally found a way to do it. He took another step.

He wanted to die, too.

His old, hunter brain recognized a challenge and sprang to life, whirring with the same level of rust as his creaky knees and stiff calves. Where did already dead things go when they were ganked? Sam had always wondered about the ghosts they exhumed, the creatures shot with the Colt, the demons shanked with that knife Ruby made him. Dean had never cared, but now—well, now he was one of those things.

And what had that kind of power? What could create a disturbance in Hell?

He took another step toward the storm, clanking against a series of chains that stretched before him like multiple ropes on the red carpet. Hell's VIP Treatment. He ducked under them, his head bumping against a rusty, bloody hook, and it struck him that his old self would have found this hokey. Total late-night, eighties horror movie material.

The thought was oddly comforting, as if every step away from the rack was bringing him closer to who he used to be.

But with the memory came the certainty that he wasn't what he used to be. He was Dean, but parts of him weren't Dean any more, and he'd drowned them out by coaxing screams from others but each victim only erased another slice of Dean, creating a downward spiral he couldn't break.

He wriggled from the knot of chains and passed another rack, barely noticing the person on it begging to be released. His head was fuzzy, his gaze fixed on the flashes, ears hearing only the rumbles and cracks. When the ground shook again, he seized a hanging garrotte for support and the razor wire sliced his palm open, his own blood trickling down his arm to mingle with the decades of iron already caked on his skin.

He barely noticed the sting. On the rack or off, he'd been in pain for so long he no longer remembered what not-pain felt like.

Alistair used to supervise him to keep him from running off like this. But Dean hadn't needed babysitting in decades; there was no point in leaving, because there was nowhere to go. Nothing to see but more pain, more torture, more corners of darkness. At least his was familiar. He'd always stayed, before.

He stumbled on, still questioning, still remembering, still fighting the dull hope that this could mean an end. A true end, a real end, nothing but blessed nothingness.

Dean hadn't prayed, not in life and definitely not here, in the afterlife, but he directed that hope to whoever might be listened and he supposed that was close enough to a prayer. He didn't want to be saved; he just wanted to be ended.

Surely that wasn't too much to ask?

In the distance, there was a flare of red light. It shot upward, rather than down like the lightning had; a spike that so thoroughly resembled a middle finger, Dean stopped in his tracks. It looked like . . . well, it looked like a battle. It sounded like a thunderstorm, but it looked like a war.

He started to move forward again, fighting for his balance as the ground lost the battle to stay stable. He didn't look back to see how far from his rack he was. He wasn't sure he'd even be able to tell. After a certain point, everything looked the same. He forged onward, watching the red light and the white lights and one hairline crack of blue that threaded through the lightning like a . . . a _general_.

Maybe Dean had finally lost his mind, assigning an entire storyline to a light show going on miles away.

He had no sense of how long he walked. Time had stopped meaning what it used to mean, and the only pressure he felt was to reach the storm before it ended. His nerves tingled; after a few more paces, he realized he was reacting to the power ahead of him. Another twenty steps, and he could make out figures _inside_ the light, confirming what he'd thought.

There were creatures fighting against the demons.

The blue thread of light zigzagged down, clashed with the red spike, and pinballed away in a completely different direction.

Straight toward Dean.

Dean instinctively ducked, but it was like trying to avoid a tsunami; the distance it would have taken him forever to cross was erased in less than a blink, and _something_ slammed into him and _something_ washed through him and the sudden cease of pain was so immediate, and so unexpected, that Dean's mind fractured from shock.

He felt it—memories spinning away like spilled bowling balls, the low thrum of a ball rolling across a hard surface accompanying the sensation, and he thought he was holding hands with someone only he looked and he didn't have eyes any more, like how he didn't have eyes in dreams sometimes but still saw shit.

Mom smiled at him, but then she was Sam, and then Dean was falling straight into the center of the world and when he got there, it exploded around him, and entire galaxy blossoming from his own battered heart.

It was like being dragged to Hell, the sensation of moving while leaving a piece of himself behind, but he wasn't going _down_ any longer, he was rising, expanding, there was no room to feel anything anymore but he still had that faint hope that this was end, and a finger of lightning pierced his upper arm like a cosmic flu shot and filled him with the absolute knowledge that this was only the beginning.

And it should have been a million things but breaking the surface of Hell was nothing more than the feeling of pushing the Impala past sixty, windows down, Sam howling the lyrics to _Sweet Home, Alabama_ in the passenger seat.

When Dean opened his eyes, six feet under in a wood box, he could still taste the buzz of electricity on his tongue. He couldn't see a damn thing, but he knew down to his miraculously restored soul that it was blue.

* * *

Sam sat at the base of the tree. The September day was sunny, and he'd shed his jacket and draped it over his lap. He didn't know how it worked, exactly, that no matter which bar he left he wound up in Montreal with no more spellwork than  _thinking_ he wanted to go, but not understanding how something worked had never stopped Sam before. 

Dean would flip his shit when he found out what kind of company Sam was keeping, but that was a problem for another day. A day when Dean wasn't out hunting down the thing that had resurrected him. Dean probably thought Sam didn't know about that, but the bad-lying thing he insisted Sam had going on? It went both ways. His older brother's bullshit hadn't flown with Sam for a long time, pretty much since the day Sam had picked up Dad's journal and discovered monsters were real.

He toyed with a blade of dying grass, pressing the stiff stalk between his thumb and forefinger. Without his jacket, he could make out the blackened veins spreading from his wrist up his forearm, to disappear under the roll of his sleeve. Ruby's blood, he assumed. Poisoning him from the inside out. He'd been careful to hide it from Dean, and with winter fast approaching, he wasn't too worried . . . but what if this went on for longer than that?

And who was he kidding, really. He wasn't fucking stopping  _now_ . The question of Dean finding out about Sam's problem wasn't "if", it was "when". And  _when_ Dean found out what Sam had been up to—and who he'd been up to it with—it would be bad. Worse than when Sam said he was going to college. Worse than the time he'd taken the Impala to impress a girl and scratched the paint job on a barricade (Dean hadn't talked to him for three days after that). Worse than the days after Azazel killed Dad and Dean could barely look Sam in the eye because they'd just found out it was Sam's fault the demon was after them in the first place—not that Dean would cop to thinking of it like that, but Sam knew—

But anyway. This would be far more terrible than any of those times. At least before, no matter how Sam had fucked up, he hadn't betrayed the most basic principle of hunter life.

Monsters were bad. That was what made them monsters. End of story.

"Hey, Sammy."

Right on time.

Sam wasn't exactly caught off-guard because, without fail, the Trickster always appeared within twenty minutes of Sam stepping into Montreal, but he wasn't  _not_ -off-guard, either. It was somewhere in between, like the feeling of landing a pair of snake eyes. You knew it had to turn up eventually.

"Hey." As far as openings went, it wasn't Sam's best, but at least it was a classic. "You're here."

The Trickster spread his arms in a silent  _Well, duh. _ His hair, slicked back in a way that managed to be both immaculate and sleazy at the same time, glinted gold where the sun hit it, and despite the extremely sarcastic look he was giving Sam, his eyes sparked with the same color and warmth. 

That was what had tempted Sam, first. The way the demigod looked at him. Everything else had been secondary.

"Dean's back." He climbed to his feet and took a step toward the Trickster, jacket dropping to the ground. "Was it you?"

"Sorry, cupcake." The Trickster scooped the garment up in one, slick movement. "Beyond my abilities."

His fingers were curled tight around the canvas, even as he offered it back to Sam. He let it go reluctantly, the fabric sliding between them, and somewhere in the layers, his skin met Sam's and everything went warm.

Sam swallowed. "Do you have any idea who could do something like that?"

"God." The Trickster's answer was so flippant, Sam read it as a joke at first. But the demigod's face was dead serious. "Angels, if there are enough of them. Maybe a witch, although there are only two I know of who'd be capable."

"Angels." Sam folded his jacket against his chest. "Like . . . Gabriel?  _I bring you good tidings_ or whatever the fuck?"

The Trickster winced. "Pick up a Bible, Sam-I-Am. There's a lot more to angels than that."

Sam had gone up against a lot of crazy things. The second he and Dean had stumbled across Evil Santa Claus, he'd pretty much given up on doubting anything. There were demons, Reapers, possibly a heaven, definitely a hell. But angels?

He frowned down at the Trickster. "Shouldn't this bother you a little more? I mean, you're a  _pagan_ god, right?"

"I'm complicated. Multi-faceted. More than capable of accommodating several fields of belief." The demigod grinned in response to Sam's expression. "Okay, okay, true talk?" He extended his palms in a gesture of exaggerated peace. "I steer clear of angels because they are  _bad_ motherfuckers. All smiting and judgment and raining down holy fire . . . think 'divine warfare' and you're most of the way there."

"How have we never—I mean, if they're so bad, why haven't we heard about them before?" Sam knew he wasn't as in tune with the hunter network as Bobby or Ellen, but still. He was pretty sure divine warriors would have made it into one of Bobby's "Hunting 101" lectures.

The Trickster pulled a face. "They stay in Heaven, for the most part. We stay down here. Everyone stays out of everyone else's business. The system works."

"So why would they bring Dean back?" Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but there had to be a catch. "Does it have something to do with the way he died? With Lilith?"

"Dean made a straightforward deal. Lilith honored it to the letter. Even if she didn't . . ." The Trickster shrugged. "Angels aren't that great, Samnectady. They aren't justice-loving badasses like yours truly. They wouldn't interfere over something that trivial."

The speech rang hollow in Sam's ears. He caught the Trickster's wrist. "You told me Dean was special, didn't you?"

His companion focused on him or, more specifically, the place where their hands were connected.

Sam quickly let go.

The Trickster gave him a sideways look and slowly uncrossed his arms. "It's been a couple days," he noted. "You jonesing?"

"I'm fine." The lie was automatic, instinctual. He was never _fine_, but it was hard to sum up a lifetime of not-fineness in a single sentence without sounding like he should be in therapy. As he probably should. But he was a hunter and maybe he wasn't so hot on coping with alcohol but he had his own pattern of self-destructive behavior and it worked as well as anything.

"Right." The Trickster pulled the sleeve of his shirt up farther, past his elbow. The underside of his arm was a road map of veins. One big, thick one—like a highway—led all the way from his wrist to the inside of his elbow. Unlike Sam, his weren't black.

"Seriously," Sam said. "I didn't—I just came to ask about Dean. To see if you knew anything."

"Mm-hmm." The demigod flicked his wrist, a silver blade appearing in his hand. "You're always lying, Sam, you know that? Even to yourself. It'd be hilarious, if it wasn't so fucking tragic."

He nested the weapon just above the bend of his elbow, visibly set his teeth, and pulled it down in a sharp motion. Sam winced in sympathy. Blood bubbled sluggishly from the shallow cut.

"It's okay." The Trickster's voice was even, eyes on Sam's face. "I'm not her. I'm not trying to control you, kiddo. I just want to help."

It didn't sound any more convincing now than it had the first time. Sam really wasn't—he shouldn't—he _really_ shouldn't. He hadn't come here for this. They were in the middle of a conversation. But. The thing about Sam was.

He lunged forward, one hand seizing the Trickster's hip to pull him the rest of the distance (he heard the  _shuff_ of his jacket falling to the grass), the other cupping the god's elbow and bringing it to his lips, and the feeling—

The thing about Sam was, he kind of got off on doing things he  _really_ shouldn't.

—it was nauseating, vampiric, frightening. God blood didn't taste like copper and iron (human), or ash and absinthe (demon). It was—

He'd always had a thing for things that were bad for him, either because he was hellbent on punishing himself or because some weaker part of him craved the power or because he'd always felt there was a piece of him that was broken and he kept looking for something that wasn't him to be able to fix it.

—sweet, fresh, pure, euphoric. The Trickster's skin was warm under Sam's lips, his hand firm on the back of Sam's neck, holding his head in place as if he needed any encouragement whatsoever.

Yeah. Dean would flip his gourd when he found out about this.

He wouldn't understand how Sam felt like he was soaring under his own skin, finally free of the stain that had chased him all the way from the cradle to the backseat of the Impala to Stanford and beyond. How power crackled like electricity in the Trickster's blood, energizing Sam's own, making him feel alive—really alive—for the first time since Jess was murdered.

And he definitely wouldn't understand, probably because Sam would die of mortification before ever telling him, how absolutely  _aroused_ it made him.

Because damn.

He pressed closer to the Trickster out of instinct, dropping to his knees, keeping the god's forearm clamped in his mouth the entire time. He didn't care how humiliating it was, how debasing it should have been to be like this, _for_ this. His hand was still on the Trickster's hip, fingers slipping under the hem of that damn paisley shirt in search of flesh. The warmth anchored him, helping to counteract the floaty feeling rushing to his head.

"Steady." The Trickster punctuated the warning with a low chuckle. He laced his fingers through Sam's hair, his next sentence barely a breath. "Steady there, Sammy."

Sam made a very undignified sound in the back of his throat, his hips jutting against the Trickster's knee. His extremities were tingling, his nerves sensitive and eager. It just felt . . . good. Not too intense, not too dull, not frantic or dragged out or awkward. It reminded him of Saturday mornings in Jess's bed, lazy and languid and raw. Those mornings had fueled his entire week, the knowledge that he could have that—the best approximation of happiness found on earth—nearly saving his damn life.

The Trickster shushed him, his fingers tightening to ease Sam's mouth away. Despite the warmth of the day, the air felt nothing short of frigid when it hit Sam's face.

He stared up at the demigod with naked pleading, hating himself but hating being cut off even more.

The Trickster thumbed a stray smear of blood off Sam's lower lip, slipping it in Sam's mouth when he parted his lips. He pulled away just as quick, wiping Sam's saliva off on his jeans.

The way his eyes lingered, Sam half expected to be kissed. He wasn't sure what he'd do then; how far down the rabbit hole he was prepared to dive. When the Trickster shifted, his knee rubbing just the right kind of friction between Sam's legs, Sam almost crowded closer just to see what would happen. He felt so good right now, rutting against something—anything—could only make it better.

The second he had the thought, he was ashamed of himself. He wasn't a damn  _animal_ . They were, both of them, autonomous and rational beings (well, Sam was rational. He wasn't sure about the Trickster), and this wasn't about sex. 

Sam was kind of fuzzy on what the hell it  _was_ about, but it definitely wasn't sex.

"C'mon, kid." The Trickster pushed gently at Sam's shoulders. "Don't give me those eyes. You know how it works. Too much of the good stuff and you'll burn right out."

He was right. The tingles in Sam's fingers and toes would intensify, and his heart would explode, and that was the PG version. The way the Trickster had explained it was much more graphic, accompanied by hand gestures and the kind of details that had put Sam off ground beef for a week. He reluctantly rose to his feet.

"Sorry." He needed it, whatever it was. He'd never be able to look Dean in the eye and cop to as much, but he needed the Trickster's blood. And, more than that, he needed to believe he could do good with the Trickster's blood. That he could kill Lilith and end whatever game she was playing.

The demigod thrust a hand through Sam's hair, gripping tight for a moment before letting go. His eyes were shining, bright with whatever poison he'd leeched from Sam's veins. He broke the moment by clapping his hands loudly.

"That was fun."

Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets and took a step back. "You have a screwed up idea of fun." He had to kill it, the idea that he had any kind of attachment to this creature. It was all well and good to excuse his behavior under the banner of getting strong enough to fight that demon, but to actually _like_ what was going on here . . . even for Sam, that was dangerously stupid.

"Sam. Have you met me?"

"Not properly," Sam was compelled to say. He looked down at the deity. "You've never told me your name."

"Maybe I don't have one." The Trickster grinned enigmatically. "Maybe I waited for centuries for you to be born so you could give me one."

"Bullshit. Everything has a name."

The god gave him those eyes again, those maybe-about-to-kiss-you eyes, but then he turned his gaze away. "Everything has a name because God commanded it."

He mirrored Sam's posture, hands in his pockets, shoulders relaxed. He passed so easily for ordinary, the kind of guy Sam would pass by without a second glance—and had, more than once. "But God forgot me, Sam. He forgot me a long time ago. Maybe I like being just the Trickster, now."

Except he wasn't ordinary. He was a mystery, and Sam Winchester was a sucker for mysteries. Especially the neglected ones.

He nudged Sam. "You gonna forget me, too?" He sounded lighthearted, but it wasn't a joke. Sam knew him well enough to see that. Sam had spent an entire year, albeit an illusionary one, tracking the Trickster. Figuring out every one of his deceptions. Chasing him through countless Tuesdays and Wednesdays and all the days in between. Learning to see _him_, not the face he happened to be wearing at any given point in time.

"I'm going to wish, eventually, that I could forget you," Sam told him, "but no. I don't think I ever could."

The Trickster snorted. "Poetic. You know, for a twenty-five year old." He glanced up at Sam, gave him one last grin, and raised his hand. "Catch you on the flip side, kiddo."

He snapped, and he was gone. Flashy bastard.

Sam bent to pick up his jacket, and found a wrapped square of chocolate in the pocket. The inside of the wrapper, usually reserved for silly fortunes or vague inspirational messages, said only _Gabe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam makes bad choices pass it on
> 
> Allllllso
> 
> hi. thanks for reading. you guys are awesome :)


	3. Cas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's a girl, right? That's why he's been so cagey since I got back. Why he was shacked up in some sleazy motel room—you think I don't know the look of a motel you bring girls to? That place had a fucking minibar, Bobby. A minibar."
> 
> "Yeah, I know what a minibar means."

For the first few hours after he'd broken out of his coffin, Dean had still felt electricity crawling like ants under his skin, fortifying him until he made it to civilization; specifically, to water and food and pornos. But as it faded, his memory of his rescue faded, too, and by the time it occurred to him that he might want to know what had happened to him, the recollection was gone.

He knew there had been a lot of light, and heat, and everything that had hurt before no longer hurt. He knew that, despite the nightmares, he was in better shape than he'd ever been. He was _clean_. That beer he cracked open with Bobby tasted like the first beer he'd ever had.

A couple bad dreams were more than fair trade for this new sense of wholeness. Sam thought Dean was lying, when he insisted he was okay, and Dean didn't know how to explain otherwise. He _was_ okay.

It was as if he'd been reassembled, the damage of years carefully repaired. Sure, he could still feel the cracks if he ran his fingers over the memories, all the hurts and injustices, all the times he'd been knocked down, but they were just scars now, not scabbed-over wounds. Nothing that could be as easily ripped open as they were inflicted.

He was as fixed as Dean Winchester ever could be, and he hadn't known it, but that was all he'd ever wanted. It was good, fucking good, and he didn't trust it for a second.

Winchester prayers always went unanswered. Miracles were never anything but ponzi schemes. Gift horses had a tendency to bite.

So he couldn't let it go, the question of who had dragged him from Hell and why. When he rolled up his sleeve to look at that hand-shaped scar for the bajillionth time, he had the overwhelming sense that _someone_ had happened to him. Someone so powerful and important that a glancing blow of their power had sent Dean to his knees in an abandoned gas station, and even the demons were afraid of it.

Someone who bled Pamela's eyes dry and nearly deafened them all.

Dean knew how the world worked; he wasn't crazy enough to think that the stupidly powerful force was on his side, for once. He definitely wasn't chasing the vaguest memory in the history of memories, just because he thought it might have been a good one.

It had nothing to do with the strange power that moved under his skin, that he could feel if he closed his eyes and sat still enough—pulling at his blood like the moon coaxing the tide.

His dreams were restless, grotesque sequences of Hell's Greatest Hits mixed with flashes of light that he didn't understand, and always the current flowing beneath and around him, calling him back. He could sense his tether when he was like this, caught between true sleep and consciousness, the feeling of the motel's sheets catching on his callused feet mixing with the memory of Alistair's knife paring the skin off his soles just for kicks.

He jolted awake when the current twisted suddenly, yanking him up as surely as a riptide pulled a swimmer under. His shoulder was being pinched, but he barely noticed it when the keening began.

The noise crawled in through Dean's ears and battered his eardrums and sent spears of ice into his brain, numbing him to all thought, and he tried to protect himself as best he could but it wasn't working, blood smearing on his fingers as he pressed them to the sides of his head, fuck, even Hell hadn't been this awful and that was really saying something--

Bobby burst into the motel room, pink Hello Kitty earmuffs clamped over his ears. Dean was so baffled by the hunter's sudden appearance, he almost forgot to writhe in agony. As it was, he stared dumbly, wondering what the shotgun was all about, until Bobby, grimacing, hauled him to his feet.

Barefoot, Dean stumbled after him, remembered razor blades still slicing through his soles as he ran. Bobby's hand was clawlike on his collar, unyielding as he tossed Dean into a car.

"The Impala." Dean wasn't sure Bobby heard him, between the earmuffs and the keening, but one wild look through the dash revealed that Baby wasn't where Dean had parked her—and then he was flung back against the seat as Bobby tore out of there like the hounds of hell were after them.

Castiel, Pamela had called it. Naming evils were supposed to help tame them, but whatever this thing was—evil or good—Dean had the feeling it wouldn't be tamed. He kept his hands clamped over his ears well after the keening faded in the distance.

After a while, Bobby ripped off the Hello Kitty earmuffs and chucked them in the backseat. "Dammit, Dean."

The soles of Dean's feet were stinging. What he'd thought was imaginary pain had been the very real sensation of gravel testing his callouses. In a few places, the rocks had won, and little dabs of blood dotted the worst of the infractions.

Bobby tore through a stop sign like it was a suggestion. "The hell is wrong with this thing? Ain't enough it near-killed you twice?"

"Maybe it's trying to real-kill me," Dean said, but even as he spoke, he knew that made no sense. Why go to all that trouble to bring him out of Hell only to let him die now? Whoever wanted him, wanted him _alive_. Probably.

"It's gonna succeed, it keeps this up."

"That ends tonight." Dean poked at his poor feet. It wasn't the first time he'd fled a place without so much as snagging his bug-out bag, but he was still peeved. At least he'd kept his jacket in the Impala . . . wherever the hell she, and Sam, were at.

Bobby gave him a look like, _No way in hell_, and they were about to argue over it when Dean's cell rang and Sam wanted to know why Dean wasn't in the motel.

"The hell you know I'm not there?"

"Because I got an alert from your phone when your locale changed." Sam acted as though this was a perfectly normal answer. "And don't bitch about that, Dean. You just got back from Hell."

"Yeah, well, where did _your_ pansy ass get to?" Dean decided to temporarily ignore both the violation of privacy and the complete lack of remorse about it, but only because they had bigger problems. "I woke up, you weren't there."

"Burger craving," Sam said, in his best _I'm-so-honestly-not-lying-right-now_ voice. Dean could hear traffic in the background, the kind of traffic that you heard on a busy street in daylight, not a burger joint at two in the morning. Sam was doing something somewhere, and lying about it. "You?"

"Couldn't sleep. Bobby's back, so we're going for a drink," Dean said, in _his_ best _completely-not-lying-to-you-Sammy_ voice. His was better, if he said so himself, because Sam's tone was more relaxed when he replied.

"You make sure to bring one back for me, okay?" A car horn blared in the background, though to Sam's credit, his voice never wavered.

Dean frowned. "Call you later. Uh—don't go back to the motel, alright? I checked out."

Sam didn't comment on the oddness of that, just said he loved Dean and hung up. And if all of Dean's suspicions weren't already raised, that one would have tipped him off.

He stared at his cell phone. "What's her name?"

"What?" Bobby had the best lying voice out of all of them, but Dean was already suspicious so Bobby could scrap the bullshit. "Whose name?"

"The girl he's seeing." Dean flipped the phone closed. "It's a girl, right? That's why he's been so cagey since I got back. Why he was shacked up in some sleazy motel room—you think I don't know the look of a motel you bring girls to? That place had a fucking _minibar_, Bobby. A _minibar_."

"Yeah, I know what a minibar means," Bobby snapped. "Sam ain't seein' a girl."

"Well, is he seeing a man?" Dean meant to be sarcastic about it, but Bobby's ensuing silence crippled the crack at its knees. "Bobby—seriously?"

"I don't know." Bobby's hands worked circles on the steering wheel as he drove. "It ain't like he stuck around long, after you . . . y'know. Staggered back to my place a coupla times, but you know Sam. Wasn't in the question-answerin' kind of mood."

"And?" Dean barely got the word out, his legs tensing like this was something he could run from. He licked his lips, tasted a hint of rust that had slid down the curve of his cheek from his ear canal.

"And I mighta gone through his kit bag," Bobby admitted. "I was worried he was gettin' into witchcraft, the way he kept talkin' 'bout bringin' you back. That was all," he added, as if he had to defend his snooping to Dean. He didn't. Dean had lived with Sam's secrets a lot longer than Bobby had; he knew how it felt. The kind of things it drove you to do.

"I found this . . . hell, Dean, I dunno." Bobby's face, or what Dean could see of it in profile, was scrunched up, like it was every time he had to tell Dean that Dad would be back late from a hunt. "Half looked like a love letter. Half looked like a persuasive essay. Typical Sam writing."

Dean nodded mechanically. Sam's technical skill was two decades beyond his actual age, while his mental state was at least a decade behind; his tone was pragmatic, his ideas nonsensical. The Lewis Carroll of their generation. Reading one of his works was like diving down a rabbit-hole tailor made for them.

"Probably shoulda put it back." Bobby cleared his throat. "Some parts were real personal. But I didn't realize 'til I was in too deep, and then I just . . . had to finish." He paused. "He's on somethin', boy."

Dean tried to swallow his heart back down, but it wouldn't return to where it belonged. He'd worried a lot about Sam, growing up, but te'd never thought to worry about _that_.

"Sam wouldn't."

Bobby kept his eyes on the road. "Kept rambling on about how it made him stronger, better. How he was gonna save 'everyone', he repeated that a lot. And then he'd go off about how he knew you'd be disappointed."

"Bobby." Dean tried to swallow again. He didn't know why he bothered: it didn't work. He still had a lump the size of New Jersey. "Shut up."

"You gotta hear," Bobby said. "I've been tryin' to tell you since . . . but you looked so happy, when I told you he wasn't dead."

Because he'd finally known, for certain, that Alistair was lying. Sam hadn't been in Hell; he'd been on earth. He'd been grieving, but alive. Safe.

Or so Dean had assumed.

"He talked about . . . shit, Dean." Bobby pulled over to the side of the road. Put the car in park so he could twist around, look at Dean properly. He looked sad, down to the last graying hair in his beard. "Bout gettin' hard off it. Off seein' his dealer."

Dean winced. "_Bobby_. I didn't need to know that." He felt his mouth twisting, sneering, his face reflecting his initial impulse to deny any part of this was happening.

"He said _him_, specifically," Bobby told him. "_I get hard just seeing him, standing over me like_\--"

"Bobby!" Dean cut him off before it got worse. "You fucking memorized it?"

"It's goddamned hard to forget!"

Dean fought the urge to tear out of the car. Wasn't anywhere to go, besides a bigass field and a rickety barn just beyond that. "Bobby, Sam is _not_ gay."

Bobby scratched his chin. "Don't think that's your call, kid." He was so matter-of-fact about it, Dean could've taken all his pissed-off and sicced it on the hunter out of spite. "Either he is or he isn't. But that's backseat to the fact he's hooked on somethin', and it's strong, and lemme tell you . . . if there's a _someone_ involved, then it'll be ten times harder to get him off."

"You could have—that wasn't--" Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. "Did you have to word it like _that_?"

"You know what I meant," Bobby scoffed.

Dean looked out the window. The field was preferable to the pity in Bobby's eyes. Even the ancient barn out there looked steadier than Dean felt.

Fuck that. Fuck everything. Dean had poured too much blood and sweat and tears and monster guts into raising Sam to let his baby brother become a fucking _junkie_. Especially a junkie so strung out they'd start doing the dude who supplied them.

Sam was allowed to be so many things, but cliche wasn't one of them.

"That's it." Dean opened the car door. "C'mon, Bobby."

Looking alarmed, Bobby climbed out after him. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm regained some control over the fucking situation." Dean ignored the whiplike sensation of the long grass hitting his calves as he hiked out to the barn. It took him a good ten minutes, punctuated only by the whoosh-whoosh of the field and corresponding huff of Bobby's breath behind him. His feet hated him.

If Bobby had any thoughts on Dean's mental breakdown, he kept them to himself. He was silent as Dean prodded the barn door for soft spots before driving his heel through the clapboard siding and wrenching the jagged pieces clear with his bare hands. He ducked through the hole he'd made, Bobby following with more huffy breaths, and then they were standing in a clearly abandoned barn.

"Dean," Bobby said, finally. "What the living hell?"

"We're summoning it." Dean didn't have room for argument. "We're summoning this damn Castiel, we're going to figure out what he did to me and why, and then we're going to kill him. And when that's done, I'm taking Sam and heading back to Kansas or South Dakota or, hell, fucking California if that's what he wants—I don't care, I'm just getting him clean."

"Woulda thought you'd do that first," Bobby said, and Dean could hear the careful in his tone like it was colored red. Could downright sense the things Bobby was noticing but not saying, like how Dean's hands shook as he used a rusty backhoe to scrape a devil's trap on the concrete floor. "That helpin' Sam would take precedence over any monster hunt."

Dean criss-crossed the floor, forming the pentagram. He knew what Bobby was after, and he almost didn't 'fess up, but it was Bobby and Dean had always told him more than he should have. "I can feel it." He didn't let up in his drawing, not even when his voice wavered. "There's something in me that ain't me. Gotta kill it."

Bobby looked at him real long, the kind of serious that made Dean squirm a little inside because he wasn't used to it, and then nodded. "I got a spellbook back in the car. Figured you'd come to this sooner or later." He dropped his eyes from Dean, turning to the door. "Hang tight, I'll go grab it. _And_ the shotgun."

"Great."

Bobby lingered for half a second longer, still a bit of that seriousness clinging to his face like the scrubby outline of his beard. "You know it's okay, right?" He scratched his forehead under his hat. "If Sam's gay. Or bi, or whatever the hell."

Dean looked at his boots. "Ain't about that."

"You don't think?"

Dean didn't answer him, and after another moment, Bobby left.

Taking care of Sammy was so deep in Dean's bones, he couldn't _not_ do it. It was a useless endeavor, and he'd accepted it along with the knowledge that Dad had (if unintentionally) locked them in this Mobius strip of obligation and dependence.

This being-brought-back business, it had nailed that home more than anything else. Dean couldn't escape, not even into death. It was stupid to keep fighting.

Dean was tired of being the stupid one.

He toed the dirt, waiting for Bobby to come back, and touched the scar on his upper arm like it might have slipped away while he wasn't looking. The two things weren't connected, Sam's problem and Dean's savior, but he couldn't fix one without the other and Sam had decided to bail. He wasn't quite right, like Azazel had been telling the truth when he claimed Sam hadn't come back _all Sammy_. Like maybe a quarter of darkness had snuck back with him from death, an extra special fee for doing business with the Winchester boys.

Dean would fix it. He'd figure out a way.

Bobby came back with the book and the shotgun and a look that suggested he'd done some hard thinking between the car and the barn and come to the conclusion that this was idiocy of the purest form. But he didn't say boo about it, not until Dean held out a hand for the book.

"I'd better do it." Bobby kept it out of Dean's reach, reluctance spelled all over his face. "No offense, but you still flub the pronunciations."

Dean splayed his fingers impatiently. "No offense, but it has to be me."

He couldn't say why. He just had this feeling that the entity, whatever it was, wouldn't come unless it was Dean. It was a baseless feeling, but he trusted it, as much as he trusted anything about this creature.

It was always him. He was the fixer, he was the one who'd make this right. He'd been dragged out of Hell, and it was his job to face the thing that did it and demand to know why. He loved Bobby to death but there were some things he couldn't let the old hunter handle for him.

He _did_ flub the pronunciations. Bobby cringed with each wrong syllable. The language was old; a phonetic translation of Hebrew, or maybe Aramaic, but Dean kept bringing Latin habits out to play. There were some spells that hinged on flawless delivery, and Dean probably should have stopped to ask Bobby if this was one of them before jumping in, but that wasn't the Winchester way.

Leap first, look after.

He could tell it was working when the floor started to shake. When the florescent lights overhead (unlit, long dead) sparked and popped with sudden life. When smoke began unfurling from the devil's trap and staying like fog, sitting heavy at eye level and obscuring Dean's view.

"Dean." Bobby raised the shotgun, a warning overture in his voice. He didn't need to continue; Dean had seen the figure.

He stopped reading in the middle of a sentence and dropped the book. It had served its purpose.

The creature walked across the devil's trap and out the other side, perfectly untrapped. Outside of the fizzing lights, the first thing Dean heard was a steady flap-flap-flap, like wings.

But it was just . . . a trench coat.

Dean had seen just about every monster variety offered. He'd fought things in party dresses and striped t-shirts, intricate chainmail and nothing at all, things that wore his face and things that looked like the girl next door. He'd thought nothing could surprise him.

But this.

This was a man. His tousled hair reminded Dean of Sam's, when Sam rolled out of bed in the morning, and he strolled amicably toward Bobby and Dean as if he were meeting them for lunch. He looked like any of the hundreds of 9 to 5 workers that lived in America, and even though Dean had fought his fair share of those, too, something about the man's face gave him pause.

It was . . . engaged, the way no monster's face ever was. Dean was used to murderous intent, maybe a side of amusement, or else the vacant stare of a ghost that didn't even realize what it was doing. But this was just a man, looking at Dean with interest, in a way that was both human and alien in one go—but not monstrous. Definitely not monstrous.

Dean wavered. The hair on his arms was standing on end, and he wanted to know. Wanted to understand.

Bobby didn't share his hangups. He pulled the shotgun trigger without hesitation, adding three explosive bursts to the rainfall of noise around them already.

The man's body jerked back at the impact, but he continued to come toward them, undeterred.

"That was rock salt." Bobby's words were quiet but far from calm. "It ain't a ghost."

Obviously. Was Bobby also going to point out that the being couldn't be a demon, since it walked straight through the devil's trap? Dean outstretched his hand, signaling for Bobby to stop wasting ammo. He kept his eyes on the approaching creature, his skin tingling.

"Who are you?"

The man was closer than Dean ever let monsters get. Close enough that he could reach out his hands and wrap them around Dean's throat if he chose.

And Dean was sort of. Not breathing. He was crackling, as super-charged as the lights overhead, responding to the familiar taste of electricity on his tongue, his eyes fixed on the man staring back at him with the same intensity. He'd never seen that mild-mannered face before in his life, but he _knew_ it, God, he knew it and the memory was ready to burst out of him at any second.

Keyed up as he was, he still didn't believe bullshit at the drop of a hat. When he—when Castiel—claimed to be an angel of the Lord, Dean stabbed him.

He wasn't afraid until the blade sunk to its hilt in Castiel's chest, and then he was terrified. Because Castiel didn't die, and he seemed more confused by Dean's aggression than anything else. He took Dean and Bobby's attacks in stride, barely defending himself. He had the air of someone only trying to prevent minor inconveniences from ruining their day.

He tilted his head at Dean, barely glancing at Bobby. The next time the old hunter rushed him, Castiel extended two fingers and Bobby collapsed.

Dean finally managed to tear his gaze from the entity. He rushed to Bobby's side, turning the man over, more worried about Bobby's fate than his own as he checked for a pulse.

"What the hell did you do?" He looked back at Castiel as if talking to a friend who would answer in kind.

But, of course, he wasn't. And there was no reason to expect him to respond.

"I rendered him unconscious." Castiel was calm, detached. His eyes flicked over Bobby before returning to Dean. "I didn't come for him. I came for you, Dean."

Dean bristled. "To kill me?"

"Why would I do that?" Castiel tilted his head, his startlingly blue eyes perplexed. "I'm the one who saved you, Dean."

"Right," Dean said. "Gripped. Perdition. I was here. I heard."

"You don't believe me." It was a statement, but with the shadow of a question behind it.

He was kidding, right? Why _would_ Dean believe him? Who in their right mind would buy what the would-be angel was peddling?

Dean got to his feet and pointed the useless demon-killing knife at Castiel. "Look, buddy," he said, "I don't know who you really are, or what you want with me. But you're gonna regret fucking with me, I swear to--"

"I see." Castiel was unruffled by the threat, but his eyebrows raised fractionally. "You don't believe you deserve to be saved."

Dean waited for his brain to come up with a snappy retort. It didn't usually fail him, but today was a first in many respects. He'd played enough poker to have a decent grasp on determining whether or not someone was bluffing, and Castiel didn't sound like he was bluffing. Unless he was the best con artist Dean had ever met.

And what he was peddling . . . Dean was almost buying. Right mind or not.

The angel was lecturing him on faith when he tuned back in, moving over to the book and picking it up off the ground, eyeing the spell Dean had used to summon him.

"There's no reason this should have worked," he mused.

"Then why are you here?" Dean had, at least, enough presence of mind to come up with _that_; Castiel's gaze flicked back to him at once, as if the book was nothing but a distraction he could do without. He let it drop, as Dean had, back to the floor.

"You wanted me to come." He looked at Dean in a way Dean was used to from waitresses and bartenders and the occasional schoolteacher or soccer mom, but not . . . not men or beings that were masquerading as men.

He should have been uncomfortable with Castiel undressing him with his eyes, but the angel's gaze did nothing but amp up the feed of energy flowing between them. Dean's shoulder prickled, the scar reminding him of its existence.

Castiel shifted his shoulders, chin lifting in a way that might have been arrogant if naked desire hadn't still been radiating from his eyes like twin beacons. His chest was pushing out, feet shifting to a more ready stance, and although he was still an average man in a trench coat on the surface, a _something_ pulsed clearly under his skin that Dean recognized as the same _something_ lurking under his.

It spread from the core of Castiel's body, and didn't stop when it reached the limits. It fanned out behind him, and Dean realized what he'd been feeling wasn't water or electricity or any of the human analogies his brain had proposed; it was this flexing, reaching, _ripple_ of power that manifested in the shadow of enormous wings on the barn wall behind Castiel.

The blue of the angel's eyes was unearthly.

And Dean remembered.

"You pulled me from Hell," he said. "You were the--" he stopped before he said the words _lightning bolt_ and condemned them both to a hopelessly idiotic conversation. "You saved me."

Castiel's wings retracted; in less than a second, he was mundane again. "It was a joint effort." He played modesty badly. There was an unmistakable hint of pride in his words.

Dean swallowed. "Why?"

"Because Heaven needs you."

Naturally.

By all rights, Dean should have told him to go back to Hell and rescue some other poor sap. But Castiel was in Dean's veins by that point, and it was far too late.


	4. Gabe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam might have been a liar, but there were definitely things Gabe wasn't telling, too.

* * *

Sam wasn't looking for the Trickster.

At least, that was what he told himself as he ducked out of the motel room. He just needed some air. He wasn't going near any bars, he wasn't stepping foot in Montreal, and he definitely wasn't looking for a hit because that was what addicts did and Sam wasn't . . . one of those.

Dean was dead to the world, passed out on the cardboard-like mattress with his favorite flannel tucked under his chin like a teddy bear. His snoring made it impossible for Sam to sleep, though Sam had been sharing a room with Dean for the better part of twenty years and should have been well used to the noise.

If he were being honest with himself, which he was _not_, it wasn't the snoring keeping him awake. It was the blood. It was the knowledge that he'd been sitting up in bed for the last hour, watching the blackness flow back into his veins. It was the thudding of his heart, and the cold sweats down his spine, and the dull ache at the base of his dick, reminding him how long it had been since he got laid.

He just needed some air. He repeated the party line as he made his way to the Impala. Dean got pissy when he took the car, but Dean was pissy at everything these days, so Sam was willing to take the chance.

He didn't leave the parking lot. He was too afraid he'd betray himself and take that magic door to Montreal.

He wasn't sure what he was escaping from now that Dean was back. But it dogged him as surely as Dean's death had dogged him before; nipped at the edges of his mind and refused to let him sleep; nagged at him until he was so restless, he wanted to jump out of his own bones and waddle off, a bag of skin, to find a new, more stable structure to build his body around.

Dean was consorting with angels and the Winchesters were supposed to stop the Apocalypse. The world had become a scary place. Maybe that was what Sam was desperate to escape.

Or maybe it was just too hard, trying to fall back into the old shapes with his brother when neither of them fit any more.

Dean didn't want to admit either of them had changed, Sam could tell. While his brother was bitching about the iPod dock, Sam's uncut hair, and the complete lack of beer in the Impala's beer cooler, what he really meant was _this isn't right. We aren't like this._ He kept trying to pretend that Sam hadn't just had to live four months without him.

Even at Stanford, Dean and home and the core of Sam's being had never been more than a phone call away. No matter what happened, Sam could always call Dean and find his bearings again. He'd been stressed, overwhelmed, ecstatic, independent—but not alone. Never alone.

And when Sam _had_ been alone?

He wasn't proud of some of the things he'd done, and he definitely wasn't going to claim he hadn't fucked up more than once while he was trying to find his way. But.

He reached in his jacket pocket, taking out the candy wrapper he'd been carrying around like a sentimental idiot. Unlike Dean, Sam wasn't afraid of being sentimental. He wasn't afraid of attaching significance to things that should, logically, have no significance to him. And he wasn't above admitting when someone or something had crawled under his skin.

The wrapper still said _Gabe_. Sam half expected it to change, or be gone, every time he reached for it.

He thumbed the word, bending the foil wrapper.

Was it the Trickster's name? Or just a joke? It seemed like a joke, like the archvillain's name being Bob or the last hope in the universe being a farm boy from Tatooine. Sam wouldn't know for sure until he looked the Trickster in the eyes and asked, but since he was currently doing everything in the world to avoid meeting the deity again, he doubted that would happen any time soon.

He put the keys in the ignition, then paused. If he turned on the car, there was a strong chance he'd take it out of the parking lot. If he took it out of the parking lot, there was an even stronger chance he'd end up at a bar. And he knew exactly where he'd go after that, especially if he knocked back a couple of drinks before leaving.

He dropped his hand. What the hell was he doing? Sitting in a car he had no intention of driving, dreaming of a being he had no intention of--

He wasn't fooling anyone.

"Gabe," he said aloud, just to see how it would sound.

He could feel his own pulse rush through his ears, his half-poisoned blood riling at the Trickster's name, and maybe it was a psychological reaction or maybe his body, his biology, was honestly reacting to the memory of the god's power but Sam knew.

He was fucked. He couldn't go another week without a hit; hell, he wasn't sure he'd make it through tonight. And even though he kept deciding that he'd give it up before Dean figured him out, he kept changing his mind just as quickly. It had been months since he last saw Ruby, but he was still in the same position he'd been in when he was shacking up with her; dangling between a rock and a hard place, paralyzed by his own indecision, hating it. Hating every second that he didn't commit to be saved or damned, but _dammit_, one or the other, please.

And then he wasn't alone.

He was used to the Trickster appearing out of nowhere but he wasn't used to it happening in the Impala, so his heart skipped a beat but he had enough presence of mind to not reach for his knife.

The demigod kicked his feet up on the dash, pushing the bench seat back as far at it would go. Sam was tossed back, grabbing the back cushion for support, too surprised to say anything.

The Trickster pulled a chocolate out of his canvas jacket, tossing the wrapper on the floor when he opened it. "Heya, kiddo."

Sam scrambled for the wrapper. Dean would have a fit if he got in tomorrow morning and saw it.

The wrapper, like the one in Sam's other hand, read _Gabe_.

Sam stared at it.

The Trickster sucked on the chocolate loudly.

A couple brain cells sparked together, and Sam said, "What are you doing here? Dean's inside—you can't be here."

He didn't mean to sound rude. But the idea of Dean stomping out here to find Sam inside Baby with a monster . . . yeah. Dean would probably bring about the Apocalypse himself if he spotted them.

"Don't worry." The Trickster smacked his lips. "He's asleep. Castiel's having a little chat with him about how important it is to watch the company his little brother keeps."

"Wh—me?" Sam asked, surprised. "How do you know?"

The god tapped his temple, and took out another chocolate. "Little bird told me." He bit the square in half and chucked the wrapper. Sam retrieved it once again; now there were three _Gabe_s sitting in his palm.

"What are you doing here?" He stared at them. The foil glinted when he tilted his hand, catching the street light outside the car.

"It's been a week." The Trickster drummed his heels on the dash. "Thought maybe you were dead. Now I see you've just been avoiding me."

"Gabe." Sam hesitated after the name rolled off his tongue, waiting to be corrected. He wasn't, so he went on, "believe me, if I could see you without . . . you know. Needing _it_, then I'd have been there."

Gabe looked over at him, raising his eyebrows. "Say what now?"

Sam shifted, uncomfortable under the god's gaze. There it was again; the impression that he was being judged, and the prickly-hot wave of indignation that rose up in response. He had no business feeling ashamed. He didn't _care_ if the god found him wanting.

"I can't do it anymore," he said, even though he'd been thinking just the opposite only seconds before. Maybe if he burned his bridges with Gabe, there would be nowhere to go back to when he weakened. "Dean's back, he's--"

"So you think you don't need me now?"

If Sam were smarter, he'd have stopped there. He'd have let the god's tone warn him, and he'd have paid attention to the sudden flash of gold in the Trickster's eyes. But Sam wasn't half as smart as Dean or Bobby liked to make out.

"It's not exactly—I just don't _want_ to need it, you know? I don't want to need anyth--" Sam blathered.

"Air." Gabe swung his feet down from the dash and twisted around to sit sideways, facing Sam. "Food. Sleep. Debatably, love. You humans do nothing but whine about all the fucking things you _need_, and if you're gonna need something, Sam, it might as well be me."

"It's not you, Gabe, it's your blood." In hindsight, there were probably politer ways to voice his concern.

The Trickster grabbed him.

More accurately, he seized Sam's shoulder and slammed him against the driver's side door, nearly elbowing the horn as he crawled over Sam to pin him there, framed in the light edging through the Impala's narrow window.

"There's nothing I hate more than liars." His face was barely an inch from Sam's, his breath hot and chocolatey. "Why the _fuck_ do you think I bothered with you in the first place, Sam Winchester? You reek of lies, of contradictions—you're so good at fooling everyone, you even try to fool yourself--"

"Contradictions?" Sam seized Gabe's wrists as if he could ever, in a million years, be strong enough to pull the angry god off him. "What about you, the king of liars, saying you hate--"

"Don't call me that," Gabe cut him off and for once, Sam actually shut his trap. The edge to those words was so sharp, he thought he might slice his own tongue if he tried to spar with them.

Gabe sat back, swallowing, his hands releasing Sam's shoulders to trail down his chest and then stop. His expression was complicated, but looking at it . . . Sam hurt. It was a nebulous hurt, with no source he could point to, but it was there. It was different from the craving, or the relief, or anything he usually felt around the Trickster.

"I just thought," Sam began.

"Don't think, either," Gabe said. "You'll only fuck up again."

Sam flinched, and if he truly didn't care what the god thought then he shouldn't have felt the bottom of his stomach drop out at the realization that Gabe was just like everyone else, trying to protect the screwup little brother of the real hero.

Gabe's fingers tightened on his chest, bunching his shirt. Sam thought there was a sliver of regret there, but maybe he was just projecting.

"I didn't mean it." He shook his sleeve, blade falling into his hand, and waited, eyeing Sam. It felt significant that he was putting the decision in Sam's hands without the smell and sight of the blood to complicate matters. "Except the part where you need me. That part was true."

Sam let his head _thud_ back against the window, the conversation whiplash sending him for a loop. He didn't have a comeback that wouldn't sound like a surrender, and he didn't want to admit Gabe was right.

"Why is Castiel warning Dean about me?" He went back to the beginning. It was safer.

Gabe drummed his fingers on the blade. "You're a threat."

"Because of the demon blood." Always the blood. He couldn't wait until he was rid of it. "Is he going to hurt Dean?"

That was the most important thing, more important than the silver blade in Gabe's hands, more important than the throb of Sam's body, waiting for blood. Even more important than the dull pressure in his abdomen, where Gabe was perched, so close to Sam's cock it was almost painful.

"Castiel?" The Trickster tilted his head, biting his lip. "No," he said, after a moment's silence. "No, he doesn't want to hurt Dean. But that doesn't mean he _won't_, if he's ordered to. Orders are everything."

Sam had never met an angel, but he still shivered. The vibration seemed to startle Gabe; he looked down at Sam with wide eyes, and something _twitched_ against Sam's stomach and--

Oh.

Fuck.

"Why do the angels care about me?" Sam moved forward quickly, while Gabe was still in a talkative mood, and he told himself it had nothing to do with that twitch because he really did lie to himself horribly. "I get it, they need Dean for something, but I don't see where I--"

The Trickster twirled the blade and interrupted, "Do you want it or not?"

Sam looked at him, at the flash of the blade in the street light, at the dull glow of his hair and the bright warmth of his eyes and the vein that pulsed visibly down his throat and the way he kept pulling his bottom lip in with his teeth, so _almost_ human that Sam could pretend.

Sam felt his own body tingling in response, humming with the wanting and the need.

Sam said, "No."

Gabe moved to get off him, and Sam tightened his grip and said, "Wait."

The Trickster growled. "The hell, Sam?" Despite the sharp words, his thighs clenched, doing impossible things to Sam's soft parts.

"I just." Sam had to clear his throat. "I have to think about Dean. It can't always be about what I want. Killing Lilith isn't worth Dean's life, not a second time."

"Then we're done here."

"We don't have to be." Sam pushed the blade out of the way, and Gabe released it, let it clatter across the dash. His curious look was back; he watched Sam as if he wasn't sure what was going to happen next.

Sam moved gingerly, slipping his fingers under the hem of Gabe's shirt, his heart in overdrive. "It's not the blood that I want."

Gabe's eyes flashed, honey gold and bright. "You don't know what you're saying."

"We both know what I'm saying."

"Well, _I'm_ saying you'll regret it."

Gabe kissed him quick, and pulled back just as fast—too fast to properly feel it. Inhuman or not, his pupils were dilated, his breath short as he looked down at Sam. His hand on Sam's chest twitched, fingers bunching the fabric of Sam's shirt. He didn't look sure.

Sam was sure. He lunged up, crushing their mouths together, and kissed Gabe like he could draw some of the Trickster's power out between his lips. But for once, it wasn't the power he was after.

He was different. He'd become different, without Dean. He'd run to Ruby, and from her, and back to Broward County, and then to Montreal, and he hadn't saved his brother from Hell but he'd saved a lot of others along the way. And he wanted to think that counted for something, that the souls he rescued made up for all the ones he hadn't.

He rocked against Gabe, pressing their bodies as close together as he could manage in the small space, and the Trickster let him. Maybe he did care too quickly and too much, and maybe this not-letting-go was going to fabulously backfire on him but he couldn't go through with it. He couldn't pass up something this enigmatic.

Gabe's eyes were near on fire when Sam leaned back, and he went to kiss Sam again but stopped, like he was thinking better of it, and reached for the blade on the dash.

Sam opened his mouth to protest.

"You said you trusted me." Gabe wrapped his fingers around the hilt. "And _I _said I'd help you kill Lilith." He raised the blade to his own throat, and Sam flipped his shit. He lunged for the knife before the Trickster could do something stupid.

Gabe put his free hand on Sam's chest and dug a half-inch slit at the base of his throat. "It's okay," he said, slightly hoarse. Something leaked sluggishly from the cut; not dark blood, but something else. Something bright. "It will make you strong. Stronger than blood. And you won't need anything else, ever again."

In the back of Sam's mind, a niggling voice warned him this was way too deep. He craned his neck up, lips hovering over the cut, but he couldn't bring himself do it. There were lines, and this felt like one of them. Gabe shivered, and Sam realized he was breathing a little too heavily to be normal.

He almost laughed. They'd left _normal_ at the gate. He closed his hands around Gabe's arms, and Gabe tilted his chin, exposing his neck further. His voice was breathless, but no less emphatic. "I promise it's okay, Sam."

It was time to pick a pill, and in all honesty Sam had made his choice back in that first bar. No sense waffling about it now. He tentatively ran his tongue over the small gash.

Dean had watched Sam far too closely for Sam to ever stick his fingers or a fork in a light socket, but he'd grabbed a live wire on a case once while he was trying to get away from a ghoul, and this felt a hell of a lot like that. The initial jolt flashed through his body like a shockwave, shorting out his nerves; for a disorienting moment, he didn't feel at all.

"Breathe," Gabe said tightly. Hypocrite. Sam was pretty sure the demigod hadn't taken a breath in the last minute and a half.

Still, he obediently sucked in a breath. His tongue was tingling like he'd just been given a shot of Novocaine and his shoulders were shuddering. Gabe was lumpy in odd places over him, hard because of _Sam_. His fingers were clenched around Sam's shoulders, digging through his jacket.

Sam leaned back long enough to shrug it off, then wrapped his arms around Gabe's waist again and took the god's throat in his teeth; Gabe hissed but didn't protest as Sam clamped their bodies together and allowed himself to be electrocuted.

It was different than the blood. It didn't feel like a drug; didn't feel dirty, frightening, addictive. It was like ten good nights of sleep rolled into ten good nights of sex and packaged in this compact body he had contained in his arms and Gabe didn't stop him this time. He let Sam take and take until Sam's whole mouth was numb and a little cold and he drew himself back because there had to be a limit somewhere. There was always a limit.

Gabe's eyes were watering.

Sam stared at him and asked, "Did it hurt?"

He shook his head, as if Sam couldn't tell perfectly that he was lying. "You need more."

He cupped the back of Sam's head, urging him back, and this time Sam didn't stop until Gabe guided him away again. The cut at the base of his throat became a thin line, then sealed over, and then was smooth skin again.

Sam kissed the spot, then further up, then found Gabe's mouth again and kissed there, so many times he forgot they'd been doing anything else. He was over-three-cups-of-coffee-in-an-hour jazzed, I-haven't-slept-in-days jazzed, the-girl-I-like-likes-me-back jazzed, and it didn't quell. It just splashed around in his stomach and poked little holes in his heart and _soared_ in the back of his mind like the memory of the best day ever.

Gabe kissed him back like a man would, not a pagan god. And when the feeling returned to Sam's mouth, Gabe tasted like chocolate and salt and humanity. He gripped Sam tightly, either to keep Sam upright or himself from falling, whichever, it didn't matter, the position had Gabe rocking back on his heels and Sam's dick and Sam was perfectly okay with that.

He was better than okay. He was amazing. _This_ was amazing. He arched up against Gabe and moaned, squeezing his eyes shut when Gabe clawed at the back of his neck fiercely enough to leave marks.

The banging on the Impala's window startled both of them; Sam had enough time to marvel that he'd distracted the god to that degree before he was looking over Gabe's shoulder and realizing, shit, that his worst fear had come true and yes. That was Dean banging on the window, looking beyond pissed.

Gabe crawled back to his side of the car. The silver blade had mysteriously vanished. "Your brother is going to kill me," he said matter-of-factly.

"You should go," Sam said, equally calm despite Hurricane Dean raging outside. He knew Dean would never go beyond pounding on the car's window; he loved Baby too much to bring her into a sibling squabble.

By the time the word "go" had left Sam's lips, the Trickster wasn't there.


	5. fraternizing with the allies, part one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He has this weakness, you see," Uriel said. "He likes you."
> 
> Only a dick angel would make that sound like a bad thing.

Cas wasn't fair.

Cas wasn't fair because he was standing on the wrong side of the room, with Uriel instead of with Dean where he belonged, and he was alternating between giving Dean hypocritically betrayed looks and frankly hypnotic bedroom eyes, to the point that Dean wasn't sure if the angel wanted to kill him or fuck him.

"It's okay," Anna said, right before kissing him. She tasted, dully, of the same electricity Dean had felt when Castiel pulled him from Hell—but that wasn't why he'd slept with her. Even for him, that would have been a skeezy thing to do. "It's my choice."  
Her words didn't make him feel any better about this fucking plan.

Cas also wasn't fair because he'd failed to show up when Dean needed him to, and Dean had been forced to negotiate with Uriel instead.  _ Negotiating _ with Uriel was a one-sided conversation at best, and the smiting-happy angel had threatened Sam's life if Dean didn't hand Anna over.

Granted, Dean was pretty pissed at Sam right now, but that didn't make death threats acceptable. If anyone was going to kill Sam, it was Dean, and only _after_ this angel crisis was resolved.

Castiel was giving him a hard look like he'd figured out what that kiss meant, like he could reach inside Dean's skull and pick out every piece of clothing Dean had peeled off the fallen angel in the back of the Impala, and he hated it.

Tough cookies. Cas should have shown up when Dean called.

Not that Dean would have . . . done that . . . with Cas. He just might not have done it with Anna if he—no. Nope. He just wasn't going there.

He didn't know what Sam said or did to get the demons to turn up--the whole scheme had been Sam's idea to begin with, and he'd been cagey about it so Dean assumed it involved  _ the Trickster _ (adding insult to injury to the Worst Plan In History)--but they burst in just in time. 

Uriel and Cas looked shocked. Anna let go of Dean's hand. And, just as Sam had predicted, everything went tits up.

Snarls of "Scum!" and "Abomination!" from both sides—Uriel sprang for the nearest demon—Dean's eyes were on the pulsing light of Anna's grace, still clutched in Uriel's fist—and then Sam was there, pulling Dean out of the way because that was The Plan. Let the angels and demons duke it out. Get the hell out of the way.

Uriel was busy with his new friend, which was fine by Dean, and while two more demons made for Cas. And Dean didn't care, really, he didn't, especially after he saw Cas take out both of them—but then there was the one Cas didn't notice, the one coming from behind, and Dean was snatching Ruby's knife out of Sam's belt before he could think twice and  _ getting the hell out of the way _ took a dirt nap.

Dean locked eyes with the scum who had the audacity to sneak up on Cas, shoving the angel out of harm's way, and then froze.

Because.

It couldn't be.

"You're in Hell." Dean dropped the knife like an idiot, and the demon in front of him sniggered, fluttering his eyelashes in an all-too-familiar gesture. And there might have been large chunks of Dean that were claimed by an angel now, but not enough that he couldn't read his own darkness in Alistair's eyes.

"How the fuck did you get out of the pit?"

As if Alistair would answer the question before slitting his throat. He took a step toward Dean, grinning maliciously.

Cas whipped around, palm slamming into Alistair's head, and Alistair fled before the angel could exorcise him, swarming from his unwilling host like a plague of black flies. Dean ducked, using the opportunity to snatch Sam's knife from the ground, and his brother dragged him away.

He found Cas's gaze, holding it even as Sam towed him backward. He was breathing heavily, sweat collecting under his collar and at the small of his back, and even though he told himself it was the battle high, he knew it had more to do with the scars Cas had already left on his body than the ones Alistair had tried to give.

Anna had been flitting through the chaos, trying to stay above the drama, but she took advantage of the kerfuffle around Dean to snatch her grace from around Uriel's neck. Dean shouted, Sam shouted, even Uriel let his angelic dickwad facade crack for long enough to cry, _"No!"_

Sam covered Dean's eyes, not his own. Dean would never have been able to shield his gaze in time—as it was, the flash of Anna's grace nearly blinded him where it slipped between the cracks of Sam's fingers. It was worse than when Cas tried to contact him in the gas station. Dean imagined this was what it was like to stand in the center of a nuclear bomb; hot, bright, unbearable.

And then Sam was hauling him away, tossing him in the car, maintaining control while Dean was something like a slobbering mess, his eyes still spotty and his ears ringing and his fingertips tingling and his heart longing for Castiel like a sap.

Sam floored the gas, and Dean sat in the passenger seat with his face pressed against the window, watching the barn disappear, and he let Sam think it was because of Anna. Because that was what normal people would be upset about. That was what he should be wrecked about, and not the fact that Cas had been standing on the wrong side of the room.

And Alistair, somehow, was back; but Sam didn't know about that. Sam _couldn't_ know about that.

Don't worry." Sam wiped the sweat from his forehead on his shoulder, without lifting his hands from the wheel. "I saw Anna get away. She'll be fine."

Yeah, Sam saw. Sam looked directly at an angel and somehow survived, and Dean didn't know how that was possible. It shouldn't have been. And he didn't know what he was going to do with that information.

"I feel bad, though," Sam went on. "She made being an angel sound like the shittiest gig in the world. No feelings, no free will, no--"

"Sam," Dean interrupted, his voice rougher than he intended but no less honest, "shut up."

Sam shut up.

Dean wasn't actually okay with this. Dean wasn't okay with any of this; with the seals, with the angels, with Anna getting her grace back, with Sam being some monster's booty call, with Alistair's eyelashes, with Cas standing on the other side of the room but looking for all the world like he wanted to be glued to Dean's side.

_ "He has this weakness, you see," _ Uriel had said.  _ "He  _ _ **likes** _ _ you." _

Only a dick angel would make that sound like a bad thing.

It was stupid—the angels had to be long gone—but Dean wanted to turn around. To haul Cas out of there the way Sam had hauled him out, to get him somewhere those stupid eyes wouldn't get him in trouble. Cas had saved his life. This was piss-poor thanks.

Dean banged his forehead against the window. The plains were fucking depressing.

He didn't say a word until they hung a left and started to rattle down the long, dirt road that cut between two fields of nothing, Bobby's garage and scrap yard visible in the distance. He gave himself those two hours to think of something to say, but mostly he just stewed and realized he was at his boiling point the second Singer Auto came into view. He didn't want to go back to Bobby's and pretend everything was fine when it wasn't.

"Okay, look," he said, as if he was seguing into a new part of the conversation when really they hadn't been talking for the last hundred miles, "drop the bullshit."

"Bullshit? Wh—sorry, what bullshit?"

"_That_ bullshit." Dean straightened in his seat, twisting to face Sam. "The innocent act. I saw you, Sam. You looked right at Anna when she . . . I mean, I didn't _see_ see it, but I know you—"

"I just closed my eyes." Sam stole a quick, rabbit-glance at him. "What are you talking about, Dean? I'd be blind if I'd looked at Anna back then."

"I'm not a fucking idiot, Sammy."

Long pause. Sam adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, rolling with the bumpy ride.

"I can put two and two together. I know there's something going on with you." Dean watched Sam carefully, used to the microscopic changes in Sam's face that hinted at answers he'd never say aloud. He'd been reading his little brother since birth. Hell, he'd taught half those expressions to Sam himself.

Sam swallowed, his silence more damning than anything else. He didn't even try to lie, just drove past the first of Bobby's abandoned cars, lying like a skeleton on their right, and cut the speed to less than ten mph. Dean bumped up and down in slow motion, it felt like, which somewhat ruined the seriousness of the moment.

But not completely.

"You wanna know what it is, I thought you were usin'. Sneaking out, acting dodgy, goin' between super-alert and near-dead. Not sleeping." He flexed his fingers, scraping his nails over his stained jeans. They were almost at the house. "I'da kicked your ass to Georgia if you were using. But now I wish to God it was somethin' that easy."

He didn't know what he'd seen that night, when Sam was with the Trickster. He'd tried to avoid thinking about it. But he couldn't pretend any longer that his brother wasn't different. He had to keep up an act for Heaven and Cas and even Bobby, but he couldn't do it with Sam. He couldn't make out like everything was fine when it clearly wasn't.

"Dean—" Sam finally spoke, the name pained as it twisted out of his mouth. The car slowed even more. Maybe Sam was afraid of arriving at Bobby's. Maybe he knew what was coming when they did. "It's not what you—"

"Don't fucking say it's not what I think, 'cause I don't know what I think." Dean, on the other hand, couldn't wait to arrive. He was quivering, too full of energy to be contained in this car much longer. "I don't know what's wrong with you, Sam, but I know it's wrong. Wrong enough that a damn _angel_ told me to stop you before you got dead."

"I'm not going to die, Dean, I have it under control—"

"You won't even tell me what _it_ is." Dean thumped the back of the seat, inches from Sam's shoulder, and his little brother flinched. "Witchcraft? Demon deal? You find a way to get those ungodly powers back?"

More telling silence.

"Your _powers_?" Dean repeated, mostly because he'd thrown that out as a way to shock Sam into telling the truth, not as an actual option. "Are you screwing with me right now?"

Sam took a deep breath and pulled the car into Bobby's front lot. "It's not like before. This is better."

"Because it's coming from the Trickster?"

Sam's eyes snapped to his, round and grayish and completely shocked. Maybe he hadn't expected Dean to come to the conclusion so quickly. Or maybe Dean was off by a mile and the shock was purely fueled by disbelief.

"Really? You got nothing to say for yourself?" Dean slammed the door closed and Sam quickly scrambled out after him. "Sleeping with the bastard is one thing."

"We aren't sleeping together." Sam's naked indignation had Dean whirling around, affronted by the high-and-mighty implication that this somehow made whatever black magic Sam was practicing even the slightest bit better.

"I don't really give a damn what you're doing with him," he shouted. "It's going to stop."

The look on Sam's face suggested that hell would freeze over before that happened.

"It's going to stop." Dean might have had zero control over any part of this situation, but that didn't mean he had to _admit_ it. He jabbed his finger at Sam. "Got it? You're not seeing him again."

Looking back, making an ultimatum probably wasn't the best move. Sam's expression darkened, keys to the Impala jangling against his palm like he was thinking of maybe punching Dean with them. "You aren't even going to hear my side of the story?"

"What story? The story of you making the worst fucking choices in the world, or the story where the Trickster screws us over because he's got you by the balls?"

"I told you it's not lik—"

"You don't get it!" Dean stepped forward, grabbing Sam's collar and shoving him back against the car, gritting his teeth. "Whatever he's got you doing, whatever you think is _helping_ this already screwed-up case, you're going to stop it. End of discussion."

"Will you just listen?"

"If you can't stop then it's an addiction, Sam." Dean's voice was rising uncontrollably; it felt like a stranger had seized his voice and hands. "I won't see you hooked on some shit, doesn't matter if it's chemical or magical or sexual—"

Sam's eyes flashed, and he slapped Dean's hand away. "I'm not _hooked_ on anything. And even if I was, it's none of your fucking business."

"In what world?"

"In this one!" Sam shoved him back, striding away from the car and toward the house. "You aren't Dad, Dean. You can't dictate every part of my life and expect me to roll over and take it."

Dean ran after him, seizing his shoulder. "Like you _ever_ listened to Dad."

"That's not the damn point." Sam glared at him. "Gabe is helping me, okay? He's preparing me to fight Lilith."

"Oh, stellar idea. I suppose you're forgetting every damn case we've had to deal with because some well-meaning guy decided to dabble in powers way beyond his control?"

"This _is_ in my control—"  
"Like hell it is."

"You don't know a thing about it!" Sam shook his hand off again. "You're just running your damn mouth and you haven't even let me tell you what it—"  
"Fine!" Dean threw his hands up. "Fine, then. Tell me whatever this fucking genius thing of yours is."

Pause.

"Well? I'm all ears, Sammy."

Sam flared his nostrils, looking distinctly sulky. His voice had dropped an octave when he replied. "I'm . . . stronger. My powers are. They. Well. I'm stronger."

Dean raised his eyebrows, unable to believe that half-assed explanation actually came from his word-happy brother. "How?"

Sam's face flushed.

Dean felt the bottom of his stomach drop away. "Oh, fuck. Sammy—you aren't."

"Dean—"

"_Sex_ magic? That's just nasty, man!" He might be sick. He could feel a strong gag coming on. Walking in on Sam and the Trickster, seemingly about to do the deed, had been bad enough. Learning it was part of some twisted ritual was even worse.

"It's not sex magic!" Sam looked mortified. "Jesus, Dean."

"Well, what?"  
"I . . . wh . . . it's not. I just. I can't say."

"You can't say?" Dean was going to kick his ass.

"I mean, I don't really know." Sam winced, no doubt aware that he wasn't improving the situation. "We just meet up, and he gave me this . . . stuff . . . and now I'm stronger."

"What kind of stuff? What kind of stronger? Didn't he _tell_ you?"

"I'm sure he was about to, if you hadn't kicked him out!"

Dean pointed at Sam again. "Don't turn this around on me. I'm not the one making poor fucking choices here."

"Neither am I. We can't face Lilith the way we are, Dean. She trampled us last time."

"And your fancy powers were good for shit."

"That's why I needed to be stronger." Sam's face was damnably earnest now, like he thought Dean had a shred of interest in Sam's new. Whatever they were. "Gabe is helping. You have to trust me on this."

"I don't," Dean said flatly. "Whatever you think you're doing, this ain't the way."

Sam stared at him. "So, what, my opinion doesn't count for anything?"

Dean snapped his fingers. "Bingo."

"Fuck you." The words surprised both of them; Sam's eyes flew wide, and he backed away from Dean, mouth dropping open.

It was like being slapped, but in the feelings. And Dean liked to pretend he didn't feel anything there.

He clenched his fist. "You want to take that back?"

Sam set his jaw. "No."

"Take it back."

"_No_."

"Take it—"  
"Shut the fuck up!" Sam was the one to lunge forward, his big hands clawing and slapping at Dean, his shouting loud enough to draw Bobby out on the porch. He screamed something along the lines of what in the Sam Hill did they think they were doing, but neither boy paid him attention.

"Dad didn't die to make you king of the universe! I'm sick of putting up with your shit!"

"THEN LEAVE!"

Dean had never screamed anything so loudly in his life. His fist caught Sam's ribs, pretty much by accident, and Sam staggered backward, hurt flashing across his face.

He regretted the words at once, but it was too late. "Sam—"

Hurt hardening to resolve, Sam whipped around and made a beeline for the Impala. Panic flared in Dean's gut—"Sam, wait—"

Sam didn't wait. He seized his duffel bag from the back of the car and tossed the keys on the ground, grinding them into the dirt with his heel. Dean stumbled toward him, catching his arm, "Seriously, Sammy, I didn't mean—"

His brother shook him off, acted like Dean was nothing but a gnat.

Dean couldn't stop him from leaving. Dean couldn't stop  _ any _ of it. And he knew he was doing this shit wrong because if he was doing it right, Sammy wouldn't be like this. If he was doing it right, his brother wouldn't go running to a fucking monster.

"Will you just  _ wait _ , Sam?"

Sam didn't wait, even when Dean tried to physically stop him from going. Even when Dean threw himself in front of Sam's car like an idiot and said a bunch of embarrassing stuff he'd rather Bobby not have heard. It didn't matter. Sam was going. And then he was gone.

Dean looked at Bobby, who was still on the porch.

"What the hell was all that about?" the old hunter demanded.

Dean bent down, grabbing the Impala's keys from the dust. "Fuck if I know."

It wasn't all Sam, and it wasn't all him, he thought. It wasn't just about Sam banging a monster or Dean overstepping his bounds. It was about the two of them trying to raise each other, and fight the darkness, and failing miserably on both counts because they didn't fucking know  _ how _ , and Sam's heart ruling over his head and Dean's head ruling over his heart so Sam was always falling for the wrong people and Dean kept pushing the right ones away.

He hated it.

Bobby left him alone for most of that day, tinkering in the garage and scraping together a halfway-decent dinner and finally heading up to bed. Dean stayed in the kitchen, the unshakable thoughts still spiraling through his head.

He was there when Cas found him.

"Hello, Dean."

"The fuck are you doing here?" Dean asked, because he was deathly allergic to expressing an honest thought about his feelings.

Cas tilted his head. "What happened with Anna . . . unsettled me. I don't believe--"

"Yeah, well, it messed me up, too." Dean couldn't let him continue. He couldn't let Castiel  _ open up _ to him. Was the angel a freakin' idiot? "The whole,  _ Heaven kills angels who like free will _ shtick? You didn't mention that before. You didn't mention that--" 

He couldn't complete the thought. Cas was looking at him again, and his mooncalf eyes were going to be the death of Dean, and Dean wanted to protect one fucking thing in his life,  _ just one _ . He'd failed Anna, failed Sam, failed himself. He didn't want to fail the angel who'd saved him, in so many senses of the word.

Castiel didn't blink.

Dean didn't look away.

"You saved my life today." Cas's sleeve brushed Dean's forearm. "I thought it only appropriate to thank you."

Dean choked out a laugh. "I was the one who brought the demons in the first place."

Technically, Sam had, but no matter how he felt about his brother's choices, Dean's instinct was still to protect him.

"I'm aware of your reasoning," Cas said. "It was an intelligent, tactical move."

His praise shouldn't have meant a thing, but Dean felt distinctly blushy, something he hadn't been . . . well, ever. Bashful wasn't really his MO. He turned to Cas to say something hostile, but the words caught in his throat.

Cas was looking at him, again, like he wanted to lay hands on Dean. There wasn't a hint of confusion or blankness in his expression; none of that distancing bullshit Dean had to put up with when Cas was around Uriel. And the very fact that the angel interacted with him differently depending on whether or not there were witnesses should have been a red flag but Dean had watched Sam drive away today, and Anna had downed her grace like a pill, and Cas had been on the  _ wrong side of the room _ but he wasn't now. 

Dean cleared his throat. "This can't go on forever, you know."

"What?"

"Whatever you're thinking of doing, when you look at me."

Dean felt the pressure between them go up, tendrils of Cas's grace crackling in the air like he was going to flash his wings again. He didn't, just clasped the edge of the counter in a mimicry of Dean.

"I . . . don't know. What I want to do when I look at you. Only that it would be unacceptable to let you out of my sight." Directly contradicting himself, he finally looked away, giving the sink the same treatment he'd just been giving Dean.

Fuck that, Dean wasn't losing to the plumbing. He caught Cas's sleeve, demanding his attention back.

"Don't give me that shit." He pushed Cas back, surprised that he was allowed to pin him against the sink. It seemed like the angel should be harder to grasp, more intangible than he actually was. It seemed like he should slip out from under Dean's hands, and that him staying fixed here was against the natural order of things.

He dropped his voice, mindful of Bobby upstairs, and leaned close to Cas. "I'm pretty sure you know _exactly_ what you want."

He held Cas's gaze, wondering if his bluff was as obvious as it felt, because all Dean was actually sure of was that neither of them knew what the fuck they were doing. He was a paper man. He'd been doing just fine, passing as normal, until the rain rolled in. Now he was plastered to Castiel like soggy newsprint, his thighs aligned with an alien body and his hands going limp at Cas's sides and his stupid brain throwing out improbable conclusions.

This probably had something to do with Sam leaving. It probably had a lot to do with Alistair returning, and the fact that the last time Dean had felt truly safe and well was when he was engulfed in Cas's grace and hurtling to the surface of the Earth like a subterranean comet. He saw all these things in Cas that he'd never had before, and badly needed, and he wasn't sure if he was only seeing what he wanted to see or they were actually there.

He wanted to find out.

"Dean." Cas took Dean's face in his hands, thumbs pushing at the soft spot just under Dean's jawbone. His stomach was warm against Dean's, a reassuring core of strength, unwavering as his attention. "Angels don't have _wants_."

And there he was, contradicting himself again, drawing Dean flush against him as he spoke, sliding his hands down to clasp Dean's back and hold him in place. Which was good, because Dean's legs were about as stable as cooked spaghetti.

"You really—" Dean hung his head, never mind that it brought his forehead dangerously close to Cas's shoulder. "You gotta be careful, man. Anna told me all about what happens to the angels who wish they were real boys."

"Gender is irrelevant to us." He was pretty sure Cas was frowning, even if he couldn't see it. "I suppose Anna filled your head with all sorts of nonsense."

"What part of _killed for not having faith_ is nonsense?" Dean lifted his head just enough to shoot the angel a glare. "That seemed fairly serious to me."

"Seriousness is relative." Cas shrugged, jarring Dean with the motion. "You believe the length of your penis is serious. Your ancestors went to war over stolen apples and beautiful women. There are many human things—"

"Yeah, don't bullshit me, this is an angel thing we're talking about."

"Dean." Cas inclined his head, touching his forehead to Dean's. His voice was impossibly soft. "Let the angel handle the angel things. Okay?"

For a minute, he didn't sound like a supernatural being. He just sounded like a guy. Somehow, that was worse than his near-Biblical cadence and stiff expressions. Dean didn't want him to seem so fallible.

He didn't understand why Cas did this, why he would come around with those eyes and that voice and his grace popping along a closed circuit between them and his terrifying _doubts_. Why he acted like he was on Dean's side when they were alone and stood on the wrong side of the room when they weren't.

The stakes were entirely too high for Castiel to act like Dean was his friend.

"I'm only gonna say this once," he muttered, through gritted teeth. "I'm gonna fuck up your life. I'm not sayin' it to be dramatic, I'm sayin' it because it's true. And I know you know that it's true because you saw me there, in Hell, and you saw what I was doing and you know I'm like the, the, the antithesis of everything you are."

"That is, by nature, a dramatic statement." Cas gently nudged Dean away from him, his gaze brimming with the kind of sympathy Dean hadn't thought him capable of. "You have no idea what I am, Dean."

He didn't step away. Dean's brain latched on that, that Cas didn't step away, he just moved Dean away the same way he'd drawn Dean to him. Taking control—taking _responsibility—_in both situations. Dean knew what that shit was. He'd pulled it with Sam before; not in the same way, not in this back-and-forth dance, but metaphorically.

He'd dragged Sam back to hunting, and pushed him away from it with his own death. He'd removed his brother's choice from the equation to protect him. So that no matter what happened, no matter who died, at least Sam could blame Dean for it. It was Dean who'd gone to get Sam when he was perfectly happy where he was, and Dean who'd made that deal for Sam's soul, and Dean who'd fucked things up.

The thought that Cas was doing the same for Dean was insane.

He pointed at Cas, then thought better of it and dropped his hand. "What the fuck are you, then?"

Lightning flickered in Cas's irises, the hair on the back of Dean's neck and arms standing on end. "Nothing that needs to feel threatened by the likes of you." His voice rumbled, just loud enough for Dean to worry about Bobby, ostensibly asleep upstairs.

Goosebumps skittered down Dean's spine and poked at his twinging balls, reminding him that yes, Castiel was an angel who made damn impressive entrances and unironically used the word _perdition_. And.

And fuck him sideways, but Dean believed in him.


	6. fraternizing with the allies, part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I get it," Gabe said, all soft and tragically dramatic like a nameless graveyard in Montreal on a rainy day.

Sam tore the Twinkie wrapper with his teeth, spitting the corner out the window and shoving most of the first Twinkie in his mouth, straight off the tiny card they put in the package to keep the cakes from being crushed from manhandlers like himself.

He was stress eating.

The passenger seat was loaded with bags from the Dollar General; three of junk food and soda, two of alcohol (cheap beer and cheaper wine), one of things in cans that were almost real food but not enough to qualify as a responsible diet.

He hadn't done this since he was sixteen, pounding his feelings back with fat and sugar like there was no tomorrow. He'd never felt it was a particularly healthy way of coping, and besides, he'd been a hunter. There was always the option of slashing up a vamp nest when he was pissed at Dad. At least it was exercise.

But right now, Sam didn't want to exercise, or be healthy, or do things that were good for him. He didn't want to be the Sam who ordered salads and did push-ups and stopped after two beers on a weeknight; he didn't want to be good. He'd tried that, and it wasn't fucking working.

Dean had slept with strippers, bartenders, waitresses, petty thieves, other people's wives, and basically everyone else under God's yellow sun. Sam hadn't said a word, even when he'd had to forge medical records so Dean could be treated for some obscure venereal disease, even when they'd had to split town because his brother had fucked the wrong mayor's mistress, even when he'd been exiled to the Impala for hours on end, waiting for Dean to finish whoever he was doing.

And Sam could count on three fingers the number of people he'd approved of, out of that number, but he'd never made it an issue. He'd figured who Dean fucked was Dean's business, and it wasn't Sam's place to tell him he shouldn't.

But, of friggin' course, what was good for Dean was never good for Sam.

Sam glared at the road, chomping on the rest of the Twinkie and chasing it with a Cherry Coke. He was going to eat his way into a diabetic coma, that would show Dean.

Well. No, it wouldn't. Dean would just use it as an opportunity to reiterate how emotional he thought Sam was, how Sam wasn't capable of making his own decisions, how Sam should really just do whatever Dean told him to do because sometimes—not always, but often enough to rankle Sam—Dean thought he was Dad.

And Dean forgot that Sam moved seven states and a tax bracket away to escape Dad.

Sam wolfed down the second Twinkie, scraping cake residue off the cardboard card with his teeth. He was pretty sure there was leftover frosting smeared at the corners of his mouth, but he didn't care. He wasn't stopping again until he hit the Iowa state line.

It hit him, just past the Beaver Creek township sign, that he was repeating history. Going to college hadn't been an impulse, but the actual moment of leaving had been just like this—a three-way fight, tearing away in a stolen car, a hastily packed duffel bag of his stuff in the backseat. Dean blowing up his cell phone every ten seconds, hanging up every time Sam's voicemail kicked in and trying again, the shrill tone so insistent, so constant, that Sam turned it off and tossed it into the back.

But he didn't turn around.

The I-90 stretched on forever, an endless double-highway with a field on one side and trees on the other, and nothing much to break it up. Nothing whatsoever to distract Sam from his own seething, and even he could admit he could use a diversion. Dean used to tease him that his hair would fall out if he kept stressing so much;  _ "Gotta let shit go, Sammy," _ he'd snorted, and damn, that must have been ten or twelve years ago now because in Sam's mind's eye, they were at a playground waiting for Dad to pick them up.

Sam couldn't remember what he'd been upset about then. Surely it hadn't been  _ that _ important, though. 

Maybe, another ten or twelve years in the future, he'd look back and chuckle at how he'd flown off the handle today. He and Dean would joke about how wound up Sam had been, over the  _ fucking Trickster.  _ But he doubted it, because it wasn't really the Trickster. It was the powers, and the secrets, and the fact that Dean wouldn't trust Sam or even hear him out. 

Sam yanked a can of Pringles out of his junk food bag. He was going to hate himself for eating this crap when he woke up with heartburn tomorrow. And that was probably a metaphor for his entire relationship with Gabe, but he didn't want to go there. He wanted to go back to this morning, when Dean wasn't speaking to him but also wasn't condemning him, and the unhealthiest thing Sam had eaten in two weeks was a veggie burger from Biggerson's (because everyone knew that whatever those meatless patties were made of, it wasn't  _ veggies _ ). 

Maybe people never changed, regardless of how they acted. Maybe Dean would always keep on trying to be Dad, and Sam would keep on making these impossibly idiotic decisions while trying to be  _ not _ Dad, and at their core they'd still be two sides of the same coin, the needer and the needed, and they'd never escape.

Sam could drive as far and for as long as he wanted, but it wouldn't change his blood. It wouldn't change the fact that fifty to seventy-five percent of his DNA was genetically identical to Dean's, that they were fifty to seventy-five percent  _ the same person _ , and the other fifty to twenty-five percent of Sam had been claimed by a force he still didn't understand.

Which meant Sam was made up of all these people who weren't Sam, and in light of that it was no wonder he was cracking.

He crunched a stack of Pringles, mindless of the crumbs that spilled down his shirt and got caught in the crevices of his jeans. He kept changing in all the ways he feared and staying the same in all the ways he hated, and he didn't know how to escape because in the end, it wasn't as simple as screwing off in a stolen car with bags of junk food and the overwhelming sense that he'd always be a freak in his own family for wanting to be normal.

He didn't know where to run to be  _ not Sam _ . He didn't know which exit ramp would lead him to a place where he could just . . . stay, and be okay the way he was, and not constantly fighting to be himself in a world that wanted him to be the exact opposite. He was tired of clashing with Dean. He was tired of the weariness in Bobby's face. He was tired of his own tired.

He hated that he could only get along with his brother when they weren't talking about shit. That wasn't normal. It wasn't  _ healthy _ . And it wasn't Sam's fault, because Sam was perfectly capable of entertaining notions he wasn't totally comfortable with. Sam didn't throw a bitch fit every time Dean did something that didn't align with how Dean was "supposed" to be. 

Fuck Dad, for raising Dean that way. It had been a long time since Sam had thought it with such vehemence but— _ fuck  _ Dad. And screw Dean for drinking that Kool-Aid for so long and so often that he forgot other drinks existed. 

Maybe Dean wanted to diddle around with angels or whatever, but Sam was here to stop the Apocalypse. Kill Lilith. Earn himself a chance to go _home_, or at least to figure out what home meant now that he didn't have Jess or college or, apparently, his own brother.

The thought twisted around his heart like a snake. No; Dean would come around. He had to.

"Wow." Now sitting under the bright yellow bags, Gabe grabbed the Twinkie box and shook one out, inspecting it like it was a rare gem and not a possibly carcinogenic snack cake.

Sam would have jumped, but he was more surprised that the Trickster hadn't shown up sooner. The demigod lounged in the passenger seat as if he'd been tagging along for the ride the entire time, pulling apart the Twinkie package and casting a highly judgmental eye over Sam's crumb-ridden clothes.

"This is a new low, kiddo. And I found you day-drinking in a Florida tourist trap, so that's really saying something."

"Dean's a dick."

"You say as if it's news." Gabe bit into the Twinkie and wrinkled his nose. "This is . . . actually disgusting. You ate two of these? They stink. I mean, they legitimately stink. I think they're more chemical than cake at this point."

"I don't have room in my life for people hating on Twinkies right now, Gabe." Sam chucked his own empty wrapper in Gabe's direction, though it missed by a mile and spiraled down to the floor of the car. "So is it true? About the horse."

"I'm sorry? Gonna need more context than that, Sam." Gabe kicked his feet up on the car's dash, his obnoxiously yellow sneakers matching the grocery bags just a little too well. It was a bad sign if he was color coordinating with Sam's environment.

"I've been doing some research." He hadn't had anything else to go on, after all. Researching Tricksters in lore had been his only channel of information so far.

Gabe cocked his head. "I suppose that depends on your definition of _male_."

"Has a dick," Sam said, through gritted teeth. "Clear enough?"

"I really don't see why this is an issue. If you're worried about getting me pregnant, well, I can always top." Gabe grinned. "I mean, I make no promises that you won't wake up with a uterus—"

"This is not something to fucking joke about, okay?" It came out stronger than Sam meant, some of his anger at Dean creeping into the exclamation. Gabe dropped his feet back to the floor.

"Okay, okay. Yes, Loki gave birth to Slepnir. And yes, the kid was a horse. He also gave birth to a wolf and a snake, if you're wondering, but he didn't have a fucking _dick_ at the time, obviously." Gabe mimed snapping his fingers. "Trickster, remember? Gender-fluid by nature."

"Have you ever done that?"

"Had a kid? Or swapped gender?" Gabe smirked. "The answer to one of those questions is yes, but I'm not telling you which."

Sam shot him an annoyed look.

"What? I get the feeling this will be a long car ride. No sense killing the air of mystery just yet." He plucked at his paisley shirt, clearly pleased with himself. "You didn't seem to care about any of this when you were humping me in your brother's car."

"Obviously, I wasn't thinking straight."

"Ah."

Sam shifted uncomfortably. Nothing good came out of Gabe passing up an opening like that.

"So, you impulsively made out with a demigod." Gabe made it sound like the beginning of a high school PSA. "Your brother started poking very valid holes in your decision-making ability, and you got defensive and ran away, clearly overcompensating for your own doubt by punishing him for his."

"There's nothing _wrong _with my decision-making ability. That's the fucking point." Sam adjusted his grip on the steering wheel, fingers stiff from holding the same position for so long. "Because, yeah, sometimes there's a clear right and wrong way to go about things, and then there's cases like this where there really _isn't'. _But Dean won't accept that my way of doing things can be just as valid as his."

Gabe threaded his fingers through Sam's hair. "Don't worry, kiddo. Dean will cool down. You'll cool down. The dream team will be back together before you know it."

Sam looked over. This wasn't how he'd expected his week—or, hell, his life—to go, and yet. "Gabe, I don't want the dream team back together. Not until Dean changes, and he won't. He'll keep treating me like his kid until Hell freezes over."

"I wouldn't be so flippant with my Hell metaphors." Gabe carded his nails across the back of Sam's neck, which felt so fucking good Sam almost forgot they were having a conversation. He arched his neck, ignoring Gabe's satisfied smirk at his reaction. "The world is on the brink of collapse, and all."

"Look, I've taken one for the team more times than I could count. I'm not rolling over and doing shit Dean's way this time." Sam lifted Gabe's hand from his neck, because there was no way he could keep driving if Gabe insisted on distracting him, and pointedly returned it to the passenger's side of the car. "I'm done dicking around with the angels and their seals. I'm hunting down Lilith myself."

"Oooh." Gabe pulled one leg up onto his seat, unoffended by the invisible line Sam had just enforced. "Bold. You sure you can handle that all by yourself, tough guy?"

His mouth quirked up in a mischievous smile. He was lounging out in the seat like it was too much of a bother to sit upright, one arm resting on the door, the other clasping his raised knee. Sam envied how carefree he looked.

"You offering to help?"

"And the ballsy streak continues." Gabe leaned forward just enough to flick Sam's cheek, chuckling when Sam jerked back, unconsciously turning the wheel with the motion. The car veered over the center line, and an oncoming car blared its horn in rightful alarm.

Sam quickly righted the vehicle, swearing under his breath. "_Gabe_."

"What makes you think I want to risk my neck like that, Sam-diddy?"

"You just risked both our necks!"

"Sam, please." Gabe's tone was condescending. "Neither of us are dying in a _car crash_."

Sam drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "So are you going to help or not?"

"Mother Mary." Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose. "Have you been listening to me at all? Lilith is going to make a puree of you. You think I want to see that?"

"No." Sam frowned at him before returning his attention to the road. One close call was more than enough. "But I think if you help me, we'll have a better chance."

"What the fuck do you mean, have a chance?" Gabe's voice rose an octave. "_Humans. _Why are you all so stu—you know what, don't answer that. It's the mortal thing. It fucks with your head." He flicked Sam's temple, though this time Sam didn't flinch. "I don't deal in _chances_, babycakes. _Chances_ means there's a _chance_ I won't make it, and believe you me, I'm far too precious for that."

Far too dickish, maybe.

"Fine," Sam muttered. He'd already had one battle today; he didn't feel like picking another. If Gabe wasn't going to help him, he'd just find a way to kill Lilith himself. Or die trying.

"It's not like you to just roll over." Gabe let his leg drop back to the floor, sounding concerned. "What's going on?"

"What do you mean, what's going on?" Too hostile. Sam cleared his throat. "Look, I'm just . . . I'm really tired. That's all. I'm not gonna waste my breath talking you into doing something you don't want to do."

Gabe frowned. "When you put it like that, I sound like a jerk."

"You _are_ a jerk." Sam's patience had been strained to begin with; now, he kind of wanted to punch something. He settled for the steering wheel. "Giving me these friggin' powers I don't even understand, abandoning me to Dean—you know, it was _weeks_ ago that you left me. You could have at least called."

"I didn't give you anything you didn't ask for." Gabe's voice went sharp, bags in his lap rustling as he picked them up and dropped them on the floor. "I'm not a fucking saint, Winchester. You really want to pick that fight with me?"

"I don't want to pick a fight, period. I didn't want to fight with Dean, I don't want to fight with you, I just want everyone to—to—to shut up and let me save the damn world!" Sam threw his hands in the air. "But you know what? I can't do it alone. I can't do this alone, Gabe, and my brother is being an asshole and everyone else is on his side and I just . . ."

He bit his tongue. He didn't want to say what came after _just_. It was too embarrassing, even for him. Even talking to Gabe.

The Trickster put his hand on the back of Sam's neck, twisting his fingers through Sam's hair. His palm was warm. He didn't say a word, but the sudden rush of empathy and strength that flowed through Sam felt like a dozen pep talks rolled into a single gesture.

The base of Sam's throat warmed like a stove burner.

"I get it," Gabe said, all soft and tragically dramatic like a nameless graveyard in Montreal on a rainy day. His thumb rubbed a soothing circle right under Sam's ear. "I get it, Sam. I forgot, but I get it now." He leaned forward, pressing an oddly patronizing kiss to Sam's temple. "It's okay. You aren't alone."

And Sam got the feeling he was being talked down to in the worst way, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He glanced over at Gabe, craving the comfort the Trickster was offering. "You'll help me?"

Gabe sighed heavily. "Oh, fine. I'll train you. See if we can't improve the odds from just a _chance_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know?? I have no idea?? what I'm doing??? so thanks ever so much for giving this a chance, I really appreciate it <3


End file.
